


Heart of the Island: BOOK THREE

by jacob_sayid



Series: Heart of the Island [3]
Category: Lost
Genre: Anal Sex, Cuddling & Snuggling, Dark Character, Dominance, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Explicit Sexual Content, Foursome - M/M/M/M, Gentle Sex, Kissing, Light BDSM, M/M, Male Character of Color, Male Homosexuality, Male Slash, Oral Sex, Rape, Rape Aftermath, Rape Recovery, Sexual Content, Spiritual, Spiritual sex, Spiritual union, Submission, Threesome - M/M/M, Transformation, Wordcount: 10.000-30.000, Wordcount: 30.000-50.000, Wordcount: 50.000-100.000, Wordcount: Over 20.000, Wordcount: Over 50.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-09
Updated: 2015-04-28
Packaged: 2018-02-16 18:30:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 30
Words: 36,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2280219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jacob_sayid/pseuds/jacob_sayid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>THIS IS BOOK THREE >> START WITH BOOK ONE, HERE: http://archiveofourown.org/works/1536281/chapters/3251999</p><p>
  <b>Dramatis personæ: Sayid, Jacob, MIB, and a surprise character </b>
</p><p>
  <b>Heart of the Island is non-canon slash (m/m), Lost fanfic that indirectly refers to events from various seasons of Lost, but has gone off in a new direction.</b>
</p><p><b>HEART OF THE ISLAND:</b> Two brothers have lived on the Island for a very long time. One of the survivors, Sayid Jarrah, is fated to be possessed by them both; one through love, and the other through darkness</p><p><b>In BOOK ONE:</b> Sayid endures an horrific ordeal that breaks him open, healing and transforming the source of his inner darkness. As he loosens the defenses that have kept him apart from others, he finds that he has been accepted by the Island as Jacob's lover.</p><p>Music I listen to while writing the Heart of the Island series: Younger Brother, Foo Fighters, Coke Studio, David Sylvian.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Why are you crying?

The air lightly seeping into his little world was fresh with the warm and breezy currents of afternoon when Sayid awoke, nestled deep in the covers, curled in the dark space of sleep. As he became more alert, he slowly pulled the covers down, turning his head as he stretched, finding himself alone and pleasantly rested.

He sat up, noticing two little stones on the bedside table, black and white, round and smooth. He smiled, remembering James' return and happiness for him this same day. 

Sayid stood, happy at distant sounds that pulled him, guaging his strength as he walked naked through the temple and out onto the soft earth. Passing Ben and James laughing, then both happily surprised. James smiling a private hello, then looking back at Ben as Sayid continued along the path to the far end of the rocky overhang.

Sayid returned to the silent exhilaration of shared concentration on the little box-like game board. He stood for a moment, the lacy leaves above the two men shifting so the sparkling sunlight danced upon the scene, making them both appear completely still, like two men forever concerned with the next move in the game.

James turned to Sayid then, and rose, pulling one of the little chairs over for him, caressing and kissing him as Sayid sat down. James uncovered and handed Sayid a large leaf of fresh food as Ben placed a carafe of water within reach. Ben and Sayid nodded to each other, and Sayid found it easy to return Ben's warm smile as greeting. James sat back, stretching and smiling with affection at Sayid, obviously happy and pleased as Sayid began to eat with pleasure, smiling back at James with his eyes, then closing his eyes at times as he savored the flavors and textures of food, so pleasing to one who was so hungry.

Sayid looked at the game with little stones like his own, round and smooth, some black and some white. He was never sure who was winning, though he guessed this time it was Ben, though Ben was very good at hiding his excitement. Jacob had told Sayid once that Senet was a timeless game because it depended upon both skill and luck. Sayid knew James had played Senet many thousands of times more than Ben, but then, how old was Ben?  _Who_ was Ben in this play of time, which now somehow included Sayid? Ben seemed to be so many things, none of which went together.

 _I have been other things..._  Sayid thought without dismay, so that he found himself bravely thinking of Ben tending to his wound, Sayid's face wet with tears as Ben chided him for caring about her... _Elsa_.

“ _Why are you crying... because it hurts? Or because you were stupid enough to care for her?”_

The memory of Ben's voice filled Sayid's consciousness, and he felt something inside of himself let go, so that he was suddenly weak, slipping without foothold into an old darkness that stung him with anguish and shame.

Ben's face changed suddenly as he caught James' hand, holding it over the board, looking urgently at Sayid. James turned and caught Sayid up just as he began to slide from the chair. He held Sayid tightly as they took in what had happened, James lifting Sayid so that his head rested on his shoulder like a sleeping child. Ben was touched to see James' tender tears as he rocked Sayid gently, knowing that he was still suffering.

“He is not finished, James,” Ben said softly.

“No he is not.”


	2. The door of truth

Sayid was sitting in the veterinary office at night, crying... crying over Elsa. He braced himself against the pain, breaking the silence with his guttural sounds as Ben pulled the bullet from his shoulder, dropping it with a "clank" in the nearby tray.

“These people don't deserve our sympathies,” he remembered Ben's voice admonishing him in a practical tone that matched his businesslike tending to Sayid's wound. 

Sayid had remembered then, as he remembered now. _Only once_ , he had heard the sound of her weapon exploding in his ears, his body broken open, the shock of the change in Elsa as he fell back against the bed.

Surely she knew.... _Every assassin knows, always the double tap._

Sayid was in the business of certainty. His life depended on it. ... _to be sure._ Just as any real torturer knew to never use their hands, to protect their own body as they created pain and the immense need for mental release in another. Touch communicated humanity, decency, the feelings right before the desire to simply give what was asked. Sayid had rarely touched a prisoner with his hands unless he was close to helping them give up, and end the fight, end the pain.

 _Listen_ , he told himself. This was the part he got lost in, every time. Around it, but never through it, he could not get at the source of his pain. Did she keep him alive? Would she have? Not that it mattered anymore. Elsa had not fired twice, and she had payed for that with her own life. He heard her voice so cruel and businesslike as she called her contact, recognizing then that she had merely exercised her option to kill Sayid without keeping him alive any longer.  _Listen_ , he told himself. Elsa stated clearly that she had preferred to kill him.

Ben finished cleaning the wound, and turned back to his tray, preparing to close.

 _Always the same question_... Sayid felt a painful wound that must somehow be emptied and closed, one that was not physical.

_Why did I care? Why do I still care? Elsa was false, I heard her say it, she was keeping me alive for information. _  
__

This is where the struggle always started in his mind. They were two lovers, two that were both false, at first. But then only one of two still made a pretense of passion. He had found something real in himself, had allowed himself to hope that he could love again, that he could protect the one he loved, that she would not be taken away like the others, that the last of all hope in his life had not been used up, depleted each time he took another's life.

Sayid allowed the rest of the memory then, of his skills set in motion, instinctively saving his own life, leaving Elsa's body slumped and bloody against the wall as she slid downward into death. Gone.

Again. His hand on her cheek.... his tears on his own.

Again.

He had killed her, not as an assassin, but to save his own life. _Only once..._ he had saved his own life, stopping her with one bullet that also took her life.

When Sayid stood, he did not walk away from Elsa. He returned to Ben. He slipped back into Ben's plans with nothing but the knowledge that if there was war, then he was in it, and if he killed, it was because those he killed were prepared for him or sent to him, his skills to be had with a few words only he could decipher. Because he was the one who could. Because he was the one that did not flinch, nor delight in his duty. He was uniquely fearless, but not reckless. He was recognized for this quality, even decorated because of it.

Sayid became what was needed. He became what others were incapable of. He took his special knowledge into every situation, everywhere he went. He was aware whenever this need for him arose, and stepped into place.

 _This was why... _They cared only about this quality in me.__ Somehow they found him, those that knew how to use Sayid for their own ideas of what was necessary.

When did it begin? But it was Sayid who had chosen to continue when it was no longer clear who he served or why. He had used his work to distract himself from his pain. He chose delusion. He was not honest with himself about why he did the dirty work of others. The longer this dishonesty with himself continued, the more darkening shame Sayid felt inside; shame that built up and pressed against the door of truth, forcing it closed. He became walled off from himself, from his humanity. His eyes dulled, his steps mechanical. He was dying.

_This is why I was so easy to use._

Sayid felt as though a bell had been struck, though there was no sound. It was so simple. Surely everyone knew, except for him.

It seemed so obvious now, but Sayid had never looked clearly at the place in him that allowed others to engage him, at the trade-offs they set in motion as he embraced the pain of a world always at war, and his place in it— the one who dealt pain.

**_This... this is why I was so easy to use._ **

 

Sayid opened his eyes, and found himself in his bed on the Island, flat on his back with the covers carefully arranged, as though he remained where he had been placed. He did not remember how he got there. The quiet air of evening slipped into the room with the clear and plaintive calls of the birds returning to their roosts.

**He lay looking at the ceiling, wondering again what was happening to him. He was certain of a force in his life that was preparing him for service. Somehow his skills would be used in the service of the Island. And for the first time, he had the almost idle thought, the realization that he had already taken the task of protecting the Island. While he was killing for Ben, even for his own dark reasons, even if he didn't think of the island at all, even if Ben was wrong about how to protect it... he was hired to protect the island. This was significant, and Sayid was sure that he was close to finding out why.**

Sayid sat up a new man. He seemed to leave layer after layer of himself in the bed as he slowly sat up, slipping his feet onto the floor, the room an invisible current, fresh with the evening coolness.

He stood and walked out, _step step_ through the temple, listening in the shadows to hear the delighted laughter he expected from the playful forms of God, seeing in his mind the happy dance of Krishna with his flute, winking and shaking his dark curls as he moved with the bliss of it all.

Sayid stepped slowly, with a sure purpose, down from the temple steps and onto the soft soil of the little clearing where Ben and James sat relaxing together, _waiting for me_... he thought as he stopped for a moment, loving their voices calm and intimate as they enjoyed the perfect moment before his perfect moment, _...which is now._ Then James turned to him and stood, smiling, finding with relief the obvious change in Sayid's new state of joy and calm freedom.

“Sayid... Sayid...” James sang out, reaching for Sayid as Ben almost fell back in his chair from turning quickly towards the two men swaying about in the center of the clearing, dancing to the sound of the trees chattering with a sudden song from a long gust of salty air, leaves falling around them and dancing about with easy enthusiasm. Ben laughed at their antics, smiling as he partook of their playful joy.

James put his hands on Sayid's head when they stopped, his fingers entwined in his hair, his forehead on Sayid's, his breath subsiding from the playful dance. Sayid could feel his own body swelling from a new inner source, his breath becoming slow and intimate between them. James kissed his forehead, and when he spoke, his voice was gentle, his words somehow describing what had happened to Sayid, and what was to come.

“Sayid Jarrah... my Sayid, forever mine...”


	3. The bride

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> m-m sex

James whispered in Sayid's ear. A few reminders of shared pleasures, a private language of few words that caught Sayid up with desire.

“Hoy usted es la novia..." _Today, you are the bride..._  James said Sayid's name in between breathy kisses and muscles releasing into the movements of an insistent bliss. _“Sayid... Sayid...”_

“Yes,” Sayid answered, hearing the change in his own breathing. _This moment I feel it true... I am the bride..._

James looked up, finding Ben's gaze. For a moment they were all still, Sayid watching as James and Ben looked at each other. It seemed that they were continuing a conversation that had become silent, a matter about which all had been said long ago. Sayid noticed that Ben's body posture was stiff and conveyed discomfort. All of this in a moment, for Sayid felt his own joy opening through him in waves, almost lifting him up, so that he felt that he might fly.

James smiled, his knowing eyes encouraging the reluctant man. He reached out his hand, waiting. Finally Ben smiled and relaxed his posture.

“Just to be there, just to watch,” James said. Ben stood, but did not take James' hand.

Sayid felt as though every time in his life had built up to this moment. He felt James' arm around his waist as though they were being swept along, rubbing their feet on the little mat, feeling the smiling eyes of the Gods and Buddhas on them as they silently tread the slick rock, hearing Ben's delayed steps behind them as he removed his shoes.

_I am the bride..._

Sayid had returned triumphant to their rooms in a temple, on an island, by the sea.

James took Sayid in his arms and lifted him, so that Sayid's head fell back with a rush of pleasure, moaning as James carried him to the bed, gently laying him there with great care, pulling the bedding back as he settled beside him, gently rubbing and caressing Sayid, who was lost in feeling.

Ben had taken his usual seat in the desk chair, but did not turn it towards the bed, listening as the lovers' movements matched their pulling breaths made deeper, pushing breaths become tiny, barely audible gasps, again and again as they moved in a slow dance of ecstasy.

James began gently rubbing his short, spiky hair and rough beard against Sayid's stomach, stopping just above the tip of Sayid's penis, making the hot breaths on the head that gave Sayid chills, a half-painful tease. He put his hands on James' head and pushed lightly, but James resisted. Again the hot breaths, and Sayid moaned. He pushed hard on James' head as James rocked his head forward, bracing himself above Sayid's penis with his forehead on Sayid's stomach.

Sayid arched up with his hips, pushing strong on the top of James' head, pushing him down at last as Sayid voiced his pleasure in delicious triumph. James relented and began to push and suck in long slow movements that Sayid matched with the movements of his hips.

Sayid floated between the inner world of pleasure and the sounds of their lovemaking in the silent room. He felt no discomfort from Ben's gaze. He glanced at Ben as he rolled slightly, moaning with deep pleasure, the lids of his eyes half closed, his head pushing back into the pillow slightly, his curls dropping over his face as he turned his head. Ben turned his head, and Sayid pushed back his hair, offering Ben his lingering gaze, holding it steady against the movements of his body as James pleasured him.

Ben returned Sayid's gaze for a long moment, then looked away. Sayid saw clearly that Ben was overcome with feeling, the feelings that made him so tight physically, so that he seemed to struggle with an inner source of conflict.

Sayid looked down at James who was caressing him idly, watching and waiting for Sayid's focus to return to James' pleasuring.

 _Nothing is more important than sex,_ Sayid thought. _I am sexual, and then there is everything else._

He thought of the size of his penis, his testicles, a major appendage to his body. When he was naked, these wiggly soft parts of him were compelling and interesting. _I feed my body so it can move my penis around_ , Sayid thought, laughing.

James swatted Sayid's hip and let his teeth just graze Sayid's penis.

 _“M ūjiʻ!”_ Sayid jerked away, then he was moving up and down, trying to speed things up.

 _Yes, this is the truth of it,_ Sayid thought, moving his hips slightly to James' rhythm. _There are a lot of very important things in this world. It seems I am destined to be a part of something important. But when I live for myself, it is all before, during and after sex. Everything._

“Stop thinking, Sayid...” James began again, reaching for Sayid's wandering attention with strong pulls on him that matched the movement of Sayid's hips.

Again Sayid turned his head, finding Ben watching him. “Don't be shy because of me,” Ben said with his usually dry, effortlessly arch humor.

Sayid slowly pushed his penis all of the way into James' mouth, holding it there, James holding his breath. It was a connection that brought deep waves of pleasure up through two bodies connected in a motionless give and take, so that Sayid held his breath as well, his head moving imperceptibly, falling with his curls back upon the pillow, baring his throat, wanting to feel James there as well.

James made little up and down motions before he slowly drew back from Sayid and took a long breath.

Again and again, each time James took Sayid all of the way in, filling his mouth and throat, Sayid quivering slightly as he arched with pleasure. Both silent, both holding their breath, then both exhaling and breathing in a long quiet exhale and inhale of desire, the two men pushing back together with a still passion, a meditation in physical joining, lost in the mental sex of that joining, with no movement, the opposite of fucking.

At last Sayid began to slip from this still state, feeling his passion and pleasure overflowing, undoing his control so that at last he began again moving in James mouth, small movements at first, then quick fucking that eventually slapped against James' face.

“ _Oh................”_ Sayid said. Again... and again. James grasped Sayid's penis so that he was sucking above the strokes of his hand, driving Sayid to his peak.

“ _James...”_ Sayid said under his breath. _“James.....”_ his voice was pushed down by pleasure, pressing out with love. _“Jay........my Jay.....”_

Sayid was completely silent as he came, his body again completely still as he went over, and over, then jerking wildy, James holding his pelvis down with his large hands, switching to a slow, soft stroke of unpursed lips that allowed Sayid to continue coming without wrenching from the discomfort of over-intensity.

Sayid settled long and slow into this after glow of pleasure with little spasms of returning release that lasted far longer than usual. James barely touched him with his lips and tongue, breathing hot on Sayid with his mouth hovering around him, not touching him, then grasping him so lightly and pulling up to the head, rubbing it so lightly with his tongue.

Sayid reached for James' when he felt that he could not take any more stimulation and James relented, releasing his hold on him slowly, then coming up to rest next to Sayid, their minds still, their breaths uneven as they sighed and settled into their deep relaxation again and again.

James became almost shy as Sayid pulled him to a kiss, an eloquent reward, kissing James deeply, softly, then moving slightly to rub James' head with affection, feeling his earlobes, tracing his eyebrows, encircling him with his arms and hugging him with great feeling.

James remembered Ben, sitting so close. _Ben cannot join in this way_ , he realized again, so many times, over and over, feeling this deep love for him, hoping they could be this intimate at last. No.

James watched Sayid's face, aware of the simmering questions that Sayid had learned to hold in check, now seeking him as the need for an understanding that went with intense physical intimacy.

“Tell me,” James said at last. _Finally_ ... he thought. _I can reach out to him. I can help him along..._


	4. Tell me

“Tell me,” James said.

 _Finally,_ Sayid thought, answering James with the steady gaze of long preparation. _I will ask my questions._

“Are you and Jacob the same person, the same being?” Sayid asked, not sure if this was wildly false or more wildly true.

James moved his head back slightly, looking into Sayid's eyes with surprise and affection.

“Sayid...” James said. He held Sayid's eyes with his own as they shared several breaths, as he seemed to start over, finding a different purpose to his time with Sayid.

“Oh, just tell him something,” Ben said, and James smiled.

“Jacob and I were born together. We have always been together.”

“Yes,” Sayid said.

“But we weren't always _like this.._.” Sayid was aware that James was feeling his way, deciding what he really wanted to say about something he kept close, a form of love.

“But our work... Sayid. The Island requires at least two, at least two sources for its protection...”

"...light and dark," Sayid said with him. Again, James smiled.

“Ben...” Sayid said immediately, picturing Ben's version of a barely registered smile behind him. There was a long moment while Sayid caught up with his understanding.

“Obviously, I didn't pass the test,” Ben said, his voice even, betraying little emotion. _  
_

Sayid remembered the pain that James brought with him when he returned to Jacob.

_The second time I met him... after he raped me._

“James, were you... were you  _you_  then? When you...?” Sayid let the last words slip by unsaid, though the words still slipped out in the silence.

“I was there,” James answered.

 _I cannot... not yet..._ Sayid thought, putting the feelings away.

**“Why do you need Ben? Why do you need me?” Sayid voice was confident again. He was certain that everything was within his reach.**

**“Sayid, I still cannot tell you these things. You won't understand it, my love, not yet.” James rubbed Sayid's shoulders reassuringly.**

“He's doing you a big favor,” Ben said.

And Sayid was hearing James' words again. _The Island requires two forces for its protection, light and dark..._

“Darkness....” Sayid said aloud, grasping a new understanding that pushed his need for answers aside. 

“I am drawn to the darkness... to that place...” he murmured. He found himself nestling against James as he sank into himself, remembering his vision of following the stream into the heart of the mountains, of finding that the heart of the Island extended for several miles under the ocean. As soon as Sayid thought of that place far below, he saw through closed eyes and felt himself moving, rushing through wet stone and darkness, made of a pure energy that surged with a slight pulse of bliss. _Where is the lava?_ he pondered as he moved through the completely black and soundless places. Down, down, _forever_... then unmoving _forever_ , feeling with his being a sacred presence, opening to receive him, cradling him in a place of mystery and potential.

The Sayid of _many_ became _one_ , shedding all but essence, calm and sweet. He felt his heart open. Something was taken, and something replaced, his heart closing in a new way. He expressed his love and thanks without sound or motion, acknowledging his source. 

 

Sayid opened his eyes slowly, his breath and body dripping with the scent of dark water and soaked stone, and the languorous sensation of being moved, floating.

“Sayid, my love,” James caressed Sayid's face and hair, his voice that of a gentle ecstasy. “The Island has accepted you.”

 _It is true_ ... Sayid thought.

“Good for you, Sayid.” Ben said, bringing Sayid's focus back into the room.

_Now I will ask._

“James,” Sayid had wanted to ask this one question every day, every hour... “When will Jacob return?” 

“Jacob knows in this moment that you have been tested at last, and that you have been accepted, Sayid. He can return now whenever he wishes.”

They were quiet for a time. Then Sayid felt James shifting physically against him, and more; sinking into himself a little, letting go at last into his own feelings of release and triumph. Sayid held and caressed him as James also encircled Sayid with his long, muscular arms, squeezing him tightly, rocking him, kissing him and rubbing him with a fervent release of denied energy. He sighed again and again as they rocked slightly.

**“I am becoming you, James,” Sayid said at his ear, his voice quiet, the room quiet.**

**“Yes you are,” James answered.**

**“And you are becoming...?”**

**“Shhhhhh... Sayid. I cannot describe these things now. You will have to wait for Jacob. Then you will find out for yourself, and know what it means, to you.”**

**"James, I cannot wait any longer."**

Sayid felt his intense focus lining up within him, his orientation to task, a consummate soldier. He wanted to question James sharply, to talk to Ben, to Jacob.

“Sayid, we are not the only ones in this play. The Island needs us in ways you don't understand yet. Be patient. It has always been done this way. Wait for Jacob, Sayid.”

Sayid sank back into James' embrace, remembering the vision of the heart of the Island, far below, now his source.  _Soon I will know..._ he thought, somehow settling back into waiting.

“How can two people be one?” Sayid added in a quiet voice.

“Shhhhhhhhhhh....” James kissed Sayid, silencing him.


	5. Dream

Sayid was dreaming. He dreamed that he sat up, glancing lovingly at James next to him in the immense bed.

Suddenly there was another in the bed, beside James, turned away from him, hidden in the shadows.

“It is not me,” Ben said from behind him, sitting in the desk chair. Sayid turned his head towards the gentle squeak of the chair as Ben's weight shifted slightly.

When Sayid looked back at the bed, he was standing next to it, looking down. The two figures were as still as statues, entwined now, shrinking and melting into each other.

“James!” he called out, reaching down for James, who was dwindling away. He pulled James' shoulder, which rotated towards him, melting into the bed.

Just as James melted away, Sayid saw clearly that the face of this figure was Ben. Then the bed was empty.

As though floating, Sayid turned slowly to the desk chair, finding it empty. He looked around at the room, now empty, with dead leaves and dust in little piles made by the wind. He looked again. Completely empty. Sayid felt a heart breaking loss.

As he felt himself unmoored and lurching about in a pressing darkness, he managed to walk towards the temple, pushing against the darkness, his lungs burning from the strange air, cloying and sweet. There he saw the tray of lights flickering before the Shiva Nataraj, though the rest of the temple was black. He pushed harder, struggling to reach the lights, to find something he knew in the now empty cave of his home.

He began to melt, becoming more liquid, dispersing onto the rock floor, then reabsorbed into a tiny pearl of blue light, dancing at the center of his vision. _I will disappear,_ he thought, feeling a terror, which quickly turned to loss.

 _Where is my Jacob? How will I ever see him again?_ He cried out in his heart.

 _Where are you Jacob?_ He was calling out, a cry of urgent need. _Jacob!_

There was no answer. He had lost everything. _All is lost... All for nothing..._ he thought, remembering the long months of waiting as the last of him melted away.

 

 

 

 

 


	6. Grace

“Sayid. Sayid...” said a familiar voice. Sayid felt a hand on his shoulder, lightly rocking him awake.

Sayid was wrapped up in the knotted bedding, sweaty and hot. James sat on the side of the bed, holding a little lamp with the steady flame of the predawn stillness. It was earlier than they usually arose for morning ritual, and Sayid sat up on his elbows, watching as James stood and gathered up their bathing supplies in their little net sack.

Sayid swung his legs over the edge of the bed, arranging the bedding so that it could air out. He turned and saw a black shape barely visible in the darkness, disappearing through the arch into the temple, James standing at the archway, waiting for Sayid, his eyes strangely dark and distant.

Sayid did not speak, and the dark figure was gone.

They stepped out into coolness, then walked up the path, slipping through the enchantment of the gate of stone and stopping for a moment to enjoy the salty freshness of the sea and the gentle lap lap of the low and changing tide. Then they turned back to the familiar path up along the stream, and followed the dark water until they approached the pool and the slight cascade of water that poured into it.

Sayid slipped into the cool water, cold and pure from a journey through deepest rock and sediment. He slipped his head under the water, the sound of the waterfall a subtle roar, almost a hum. He felt his hair behind him, undulating like seaweed. The flow of the water pushed against his face, and with his eyes firmly closed, he turned inside, returning to his dream, feeling it again. _Where are you Jacob?  Was that you my love?_ He felt again the little splitting feeling in his heart, a tightness stretching, then breaking in little bands, slowly loosening the bindings of his heart.

After bathing, the sky just light, his clean hair long with the rivulets of water still falling through his thick curls, James was waiting for him, his face serious. He extinguished the little lamp and left it with their things. James looked at the stream then, his gaze unfocused, then his eyes closed, his head turned slightly, his body motionless. He seemed to be focusing upon something unseen, waiting for some sound or signal of approach.

James opened his eyes, his face soft and knowing as he walked to Sayid.

“Come, my love,” he said raising his hand.

 _He's going to do that..._ Sayid thought as James' hand covered his eyes, his other hand lightly upon Sayid's arm.

Instantly they were someplace much more light, with a brisk breeze that cut into Sayid's wet and bare skin. James' hand came away from Sayid's eyes and he was awed again by The Signal, their name for the highest point on the Island, a vantage from which the entire island and the ocean that surrounded it were visible. Sayid turned slowly, taking in this just light view upon all sides, then looking upon the visible parts of the Island, the grand and steep mountain tops that dropped from view near the beaches, slipping into dark valleys unseen behind the steep curves of the larger ridges.

James waited as Sayid turned slowly, then stepped behind him, caressing him, grasping him and pulling him against his chest and belly, his arms around the smaller man.

They stood together, relaxed and content. James knowing fully what was about to happen, and Sayid knowing not at all. Sayid only knew that something was being made this moment for him, and all that he need do was to accept it. He felt a surge of gentle bliss rising and falling within his body, like his breath, like the fluctuations of the wind, reassuring and sweet.

“I will...” he whispered on the breeze, hearing the sounds change as they danced away, down from the high place into the deepest green places of the Island below.

 _It is their hearts that beat as one_ , he thought, feeling James' heart glowing behind his own, a connection made from grace.

 _It is grace that I'm feeling_ , he thought, picturing the good will of the Island rising to meet them, to hold them up, then bring them down again, following with each step, each touch upon a living being disguised as a tropical island, like any other Island, hidden in plain sight.

“Who _are_ you?” he whispered aloud, waiting for the Island's answer. He expected a human's reply, and then asked himself once again if the brothers were still human, and how long it had been since they became something else.

James stepped back then, turning Sayid around, then carefully placing his foot solid upon Sayid's feet, he leaned into his weight upon them. He smiled at Sayid, his eyes so close, dancing with magic, the magic of his soul.

"Don't be afraid, Sayid. You can only leave behind and _receive_ in this way..."

Sayid nodded, still completely unaware of what James would do.

With one swift motion, James used his body to push Sayid as hard as he could, his arms extending as Sayid fell off of the cliff alone, falling backwards, then head down, certain that he was to die, that this was the moment when he would cease to exist.

His fall accelerated so quickly that it was hard to take his last breaths, and managed one word while he yet could breathe: “Jacob!”

Immediately his descent stopped and he was buoyed back up, lightly ascending. He felt his being remade, a sort of liquid softness that turned this way and that as he ascended the huge cliff, James coming into view as he continued up and away from him.

James laughed. “Come back,” he yelled, whooping. “Sayid! Sayid!” he called out, doing the funny dance he had made up for Sayid's amusement, turning about as he watched Sayid flying upward.

“Ohhhhhh,” Sayid said as the Island got smaller.

“Sayid,” said a voice at his ear. Sayid grabbed onto the source of that voice.

“Ohhhhhhhhh....” Sayid said, clinging to James. He felt reassured enough to look down, to make sure he was not dreaming. James' held Sayid, and their ascent slowed until they had stopped, no longer rising.

Sayid began to relax. James' strong grip on him reassured him, and he was more calm now that they were no longer ascending.

“I know what you love most, my beloved,” James said, his lips at Sayid's ear.

“Jacob,” Sayid said and James squeezed him with delight.

Sayid was beginning to understand, just slightly, the point of throwing him off of cliff before he knew that he could fly.

“The Island would have caught you,” James said. "But then it would have required something else from you, a different test."

Sayid felt suddenly that a conversation while flying was unacceptable.

“What of the fuck...?” he said, clinging to James, adding several choice words in Iraqi Arabic.

James laughed. He held Sayid's hand with an iron grip as he danced about.

“Nooooo...” said Sayid, trying to get James' arm back around him.

“Sayid, let go...” James instructed. “I will not let go of your hand.”

“Filthy Americans...” Sayid said. He was unaware that he had slipped into Arabic. He extended his arm slowly, still grasping James' outstretched hand tightly. Nothing happened.

Sayid's fear began to subside, and was just slightly replaced by a giddy feeling of invincibility.

“Careful, Sayid.” James said, holding his hand even tighter.

“Yes, we should be careful,” Sayid began to laugh, and James laughed with him.

The two men grabbed each other, trying to kiss when they were lost in laughter, trying to dance when they were far from their element.

Sayid was freezing. “Next time with clothes,” he said.

James reached towards his eyes.

“Oh, here we are going...” Sayid said in Arabic, closing his eyes.


	7. Only once

Sayid and James were flying, their arms reaching to each other with a strong clasping of their hands. But they weren't flying in any way Sayid could understand. The world seemed to spin around them, so that it all appeared to be two-dimensional, held in place at the center. Sayid still “saw” the geography, well enough to willingly skim above it without fear of running into the intensely steep cliffs of home, moving like the bones of an Island creature just below him.

There were several moments when the Island came up towards them in a sudden rush, tilting into them, so that they at last passed through this surface world and entered a completely dark world where the air passed over his body in flight, and Sayid still grasped James' hand, warm and alive.

Deeper, a place that felt deeper... were they even moving? Then so suddenly still. Sayid could not feel his body. He felt alone and tried to call out to James, but he could make no sound. Then he felt James' touch on his arm, and he felt his body again, a searing pain on his arm from this touch.

“Sayid,” said a voice. Sayid could not answer.

“Sayid...” the voice was louder, commanding. Still Sayid tried, but could make no sound.

“Sayid.” His name had a power, the emanating force of a spoken word, and Sayid found and followed that force, tracing to its beginning, his source. He touched that place, now inside of him, feeling himself enveloping the entire Island, the center of the world and all beyond it, spinning in a silent dance too strange to remember.

 _I remember_ , he thought. He remembered these _inner_ places from before, when he had followed the sparks of his awakening energy out into space and back again. He could not tell if he was still or moving in relation to his surroundings. Then he felt a profound change of scale that rendered all that was close or far away eternally moving in relation to everything else.

At that moment, he felt himself absorbed by the Island, the place in his center that was not moving, that was still to him.

Instantly, he opened his eyes, cradled in James' arms as they floated so gently above the water, skimming just above the golden light of morning reflected there, the sea air fragrant and touching as spray, moist on Sayid's skin.

Sayid looked up and saw the last of the strange clouds that sheltered the smaller island lifting, and felt a surge of wonder and curiosity about their destination as they reached the place where the water stopped and the Island began.

James hesitated, facing the glowing cliffs above. "This is where we approach, to honor and worship as we climb up to the temple," James explained.

"A temple..." Sayid became more alert. Up and up they climbed, moving towards the upper reaches of the Island, tall walls of stone that fell straight away to the sea and on into the depths, where Sayid knew it joined with the larger island.

Sayid realized that he was no longer holding James' hand. James flew next to him, eyes closed, his body turning slightly as they ascended slowly, so that he came around again and was facing the steep black rock with it's living cloak of brightest green.

“My love,” Sayid said, ecstatic. He noticed the sound whipped away by the wind, but heard James' answer, _inside_ : “My love...”

They slowed, and James' reached for Sayid's hand as they reached a solitary ridge that was flat and long, a horizontal shelf, deeply green and covered with large trees. At the end of the shelf it curved around, stopping at a large ravine surrounded by little trees, with the ravine bottom a familiar line of lighter stone that looked like sand from the distance, lining the downward path of the water when it rained.

Sayid saw right away the familiar square opening in the rock, carved so similar to the facade of their own temple, their home.

They alighted on the grassy place in front of this opening. Sayid immediately fell down, and then joined James in laughing at himself, and the delicious fun of learning what is least expected.

James fell down next to him and they lay on their backs, laughing and sighing as the low sun of morning playing with the breeze in the treetops.

Sayid felt a new kinship with the trees, who knew the air in a way he had not known it before. He felt very acquainted with these places now. He also felt a tiny circular wobble in his world, unsettling, his awareness expanded so greatly, both below, and now above the Island, somehow all connected.

After a time, he adjusted to this new mapping of his world and sat up. James got up and gave him his hand, pulling him to his feet.

“You will only have to do these things once, Sayid,” James repeated with a reassuring smile, squeezing his arm. "I think that is best for your safety," Sayid mused, and James laughed, enjoying Sayid's teasing about tossing him off the Signal.

James turned then towards the dark temple arch, looking back at Sayid, beckoning for him to follow as he turned away, and climbed the steps.


	8. Never again

They stood inside, waiting for their eyes to adjust to the dark, and then passed through another, much larger arch opening to a large temple with windows high in the rock, filling the space with a golden, soft and sunny light dancing with sunbeams.

Sayid was overcome with a mix of awe and exhilaration, release and denied sadness as he first took in the huge sitting Buddha that appeared to hold up the entire front of the temple, and at the base of this Buddha stood the one that he loved, that he needed forever, whom he would now establish forever in the temple of his heart.

He felt weightless, barely touching the polished rock, whisper soft beneath his feet as in a dream he went to his Jacob. Jacob who was moved to tears, Jacob who held his arms out to Sayid, kissing Sayid's face and lips and forehead and hair.

“Jacob, my Jacob...” Sayid said over and over, hugging Jacob, feeling his familiar energy, smelling his familiar scent, playing with his spiky hair and beard, now longer, his boyish hair always full of sand.

“Sayid, my Sayid...” Jacob answered, petting Sayid, allowing Sayid to grasp and pull and stroke at his whole body, naked as Sayid's. They gently fondled each other's genitals, loose and soft, and played in the hair on their chests and abdomens, tickled and scratched each others back as they each liked, with the familiar knowledge of lovers.

Time passed and Sayid would not let Jacob go. James appeared next to them, and both men opened their arms, welcoming him into their blissful embrace.

Finally Sayid was still against Jacob, rocking very gently, taking it all in. _This is real..._ he reassured himself, his soul quenched.

“Never again, Jacob,” he said softly. “Never again.”

“Never again,” Jacob replied.

Jacob turned to James then, and and Sayid let go a little, so that they embraced for some time, speaking to each other softly, rubbing each other's back and head and hair.

“You chose well, my brother,” James said when they stepped apart at last.

“Yes,” Jacob answered. “Yes I did.”

The two men stood smiling at Sayid, admiring his sincere interest in learning from them, his curiosity and patience for understanding, and openness to what was happening to him.

“Come,” Jacob said as he led Sayid to the foot of the Buddha, where offerings, candles and incense were arranged. The Buddha's left hand was relaxed, resting palm up in his lap. The right arm, also relaxed, traversed his lap with the fingers of the bent hand just touching the pedestal, the earth.

“ _Bhumisparsha_ ,” Jacob said. One word. Sayid had seen Buddhas such as this one in the hangings on the walls of their own temple, but had never asked what this posture, or _mudra_ , meant.

 _Already we have returned to teaching_ , Sayid thought, smiling.

“Only what is real can bear witness. Discrimination, skillful means,” Jacob said, gesturing with his right hand, dropping his own hand downward, pointing at the earth. “Wisdom,” he added, curling his left hand softly at his abdomen.

Then Jacob turned and _pranamed_ for a moment _,_ bowing low to the murti, whispering, lost in worship for just a moment. Then he stood in a way that communicated great purpose to Sayid, who touched his own heart as Jacob touched his.  


	9. I will

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> m-m sex, oral sex, anal sex, group sex, threesome

Jacob smiled as he gestured for James and Sayid to follow him. Sayid could tell that James was concentrating, was preparing for something, choosing a greater purpose in following Jacob, their leader. Jacob led them through a small arch into a large room with a bed and a desk, and with the same style of high windows as their rooms on the big island providing ventilation and a soft, golden light.

The room was lit with several candles, and food was laid out on a low circular table with cushions around it.

 _You knew that we were coming, that I was coming... my beloved,_ Sayid thought, overcome with a new tenderness for his reunion with Jacob.

There were goblets, and a bottle of wine. Cheeses, berries and other fruit, little crunchy biscuits and chocolate were arranged with little plates in a stack, cloth napkins, and special little lamps that smelled of honey.

Sayid noticed long lengths of silk on the bed and guessed their purpose, lifting one, finding the arms of an exquisite robe of burgundy silk, Jacob's gift. Jacob slipped into a purple robe, bringing the dark gray robe to James.

The three men sat, arranging their cushions. They managed to eat slowly, and the brothers chatted softly between bites about small matters, and some strange observations regarding Jacob's time away that puzzled Sayid, though he only listened. He savored an opportunity to watch his two lovers talking with each other. They were both glowing, so obviously happy to be sharing their world, catching up.

Sayid was careful to eat a light meal, hungry as he was for food other than mangoes and fish. He closed his eyes with a square of the chocolate on his tongue and then closed his mouth, the taste a sonnet, a mountain summit, a visceral display of inner fireworks. He did this a few times, closing his eyes each time. When he opened his eyes, Jacob and James were sitting without moving, their eyes focused on him.

“What?” he said, looking down, then holding his hand up for inspection. He wouldn't have been surprised if he was all green, or covered with fur.

The two men said nothing. They were sitting close together, shoulder to shoulder, and Sayid could see then that their hands were entwined against the floor.

Sayid felt that their gaze changed him, so that several moments later they both smiled at the same time, satisfied. They arose together, allowing the silk to slip off like the breath from a silent kiss. They gestured for Sayid to stand, clasping his hands, pulling him up to them.

Sayid was electrified by their touch, and could not hold still. He felt like a fish jerking about in heavy water, only the more firmly on the hook. They grasped Sayid to them, three become one, and Sayid could feel their fire, their vast reserve of energy rippling under his struggle, strengthening his will to reach them, curling over his skin as pure pleasure. He opened to their insistent touch, feeling no fear or pain, only the knowledge that he would die if they stopped too soon, and the trust to say _yes_ , to know that they would not.

Sayid felt himself floating in a place of a sure knowledge, sure of his brothers, with whom trust was totally and lovingly given and shared.

As in a dream, the brothers brought Sayid with them to the large bed, with little lamps in various openings along the wall. They disrobed him slowly, the silk pulling smooth across his skin. They remained standing, each taking a turn at holding him up, watching as the other brother touched him, inspecting and claiming his every place and part, the subtle and the hidden, smelling and kissing and inspecting. They listened for the changes in Sayid's breathing as they each cradled his genitals, smelling and tasting the skin there, smooth and soft, loose and warm.

Finally Sayid's knees gave way and the brothers caught him, lifting him, soothing him so that he relaxed into their arms, letting go of it all, letting them be what he lived for, letting their pleasuring move through him and the parts that would pleasure them in return.

They laid Sayid carefully on the center of the bed, moving and turning to be most comfortable as they stroked his body, lightly and firmly, whisper soft in the most sensitive places, enthralled by his moans and movements of pleasure.

There was a pause, and Sayid opened his eyes. The bed dipped towards him as the brothers leaned over him, joining in a kiss very close to his own lips, theirs soft and brushing together with tiny flicks of their tongues just visible in the low light. They brought their lips to Sayid then, with the same soft brushing and little tastes of each other's tongues, tasting of the wine and chocolate, kissing him together and taking turns.

“Sayid...” they whispered at his ears, brushing aside his curls with their breath and noses between kisses. “ _Sayid_...”

They moved down together and grasped the base of his cock gently, then licked either side of him, up and down and up and up, over and over together, then kissing on and around his cock, taking turns with sucking the head, and further down, both moaning as their excitement mounted.

“Follow us, Sayid...” they whispered as they sat up, their hands still on his cock. “ _Follow us_...” Sayid heard these whispers, and his mind ruled by his senses very slowly came to focus on the words, then to wonder what they meant.

“I will....” he said. “Show me.”

The brothers sat up, and Jacob gently rolled Sayid over, lifting under his hips, sliding under them, positioning himself with his legs folded flat against his belly, Sayid against him, his weight held on Jacob's legs. James brought the little jar of oil, and poured a liberal amount of the oil onto his hand again and again as he smoothed this oil onto Sayid's penis, so sensitive and hard.

Then James played a little with his well-oiled fingers at Jacob's opening, sliding his finger in a little, hearing Jacob's inhalation of pleasure, again and again. Then he grasped Sayid's cock and slid the head into place, teasing them both, holding it so for several moments.

James held Sayid just so as he pushed very slowly against him, laying onto Sayid's back, controlling the force and speed of his entry into Jacob. He pushed until they were completely joined, then pushed more, urging them to a new depth of penetration, holding them there.

Sayid felt James' fingers at his own opening, and realized that James had oiled his own cock as well. Sayid had never experienced this lovemaking with two men at once, and pictured how they looked from above, surrounded by the little lamps, the light rippling on the motions and the progress of a slow, purposeful movement of joining.

Slowly, slowly James entered Sayid, pulling slightly a couple of times to even the places saturated with the slippery oil, a slow plunge that Sayid communicated to Jacob through the flexing of his body and the movements of his cock inside of him.

Jacob sighed, and James answered. They both wiggled against Sayid, holding him.

 _They have me between them_ , Sayid thought, again and again. _They need me here, between them_... he did not know what that meant.

“ _Yes_...” said James when Sayid began to move, finding the rhythm, pushing in and out of Jacob, while pulling off and back onto James. James and Jacob both stopped then, accepting his fucking motions, bracing against them so that they became effective and rhythmic, a passionate slapping sound, loud in the silence, and intensely arousing.

Sayid found himself fucking the two men that he loved. Fucking and being fucked by them. He felt something inside of him fall away. Something he knew well, but would never miss or even remember. There was only _now_ , and these were the parts of him, three as one. _Let it always be so..._ he prayed, a prayer that became a vow.

The intensely aroused men began driving as one to their peak, slipping into an uncoordinated motion that only worked half the time for any one of the lovers, but sent them all into a new level of passion, their breathing labored and mixed with gasps and moans, rising on their joy, on the need to slip over the top and find release and relief.

Sayid felt the two brothers slowing so slightly, listening, listening to each other's sounds. Somehow he knew this, and listened to them.

“ _Sayid_...” Jacob whispered. Sayid was floating on the hot, liquid pleasure of Jacob's desire for him, spoken as his name. He felt that Jacob was speaking of him to James, that James understood this sentence made with one word.

“ _Sayid_...” James answered, a serious reply of love already promised, the syllables clipped and breathy hot from his passion.

Sayid felt that these two men could now speak for his heart.

“James...” Sayid said slowly, matching the measured ecstacy in his pushing into Jacob. “Jacob...” he loved this name, and felt that he was joining their conversation, hearing the vow in his heart given voice in this word.

“Jacob...” he whispered as he was overcome, swooning with passion, again feeling something inside of himself falling away.

They reached for the place of slipping over the top then, soon gasping and crying out with pleasure, the sounds of three boys crying out, of three men moaning in a low, guttural complaint, undone by the pleasure, falling at last from the passion into a moist and heaving tumble on the bed.

They fell away and beside each other, their deep breaths lent to dissolving sighs. Sayid with his eyes closed listened to this familiar give and take with the unseen union of darkness and air. He listened, and found that these currents were alive, finding him every time his brothers loved him, speaking his name.

“ _Sayid_...” “ _Sayid_...” they whispered. “ _Follow us_...”

“ _I will_...” he answered again, giving himself to this divine current, made of love.

They moved as one to stand and lift Sayid from the bed, carrying him across the room. His legs pushed but would not pull, so that they dragged on the floor, the tops of his feet sliding behind him on the smooth rock, his head lolling about slightly. He tried to see where they were going, but saw only rock. He knew that it was an illusion, and the brothers swept it aside in a gentle wash of brief energy from their waved hands, a slight blue glow trailing as the rock disappeared and opened onto a small, completely dark passageway.

The men carried Sayid into this darkness and on into the unseen path through massive rock, stopping to help him walk again as his muscles regained their coordination. Sayid felt himself led along through blackness, as in a dream, his movements an answer to their will for him, that he walk with them as one who was theirs, as he had been for many days now, and now more so than ever, with every step.

Then Sayid noticed a tiny glow that grew around him. He was standing alone, then made out two figures, completely dark, waiting for him it seemed. They stepped apart, and Sayid could see a halo of blue light escaping from an opening in the floor. They reached to him, and Sayid walked up to the light, peering down.

“No...” he said, suddenly afraid. But he was already falling slowly into that light, and his lungs and skin burned where it touched his skin and his breath.

So relieved, Sayid realized that the two men had slipped into the opening with him between them, falling into an unseen depth below, the air rushing past them as they fell. And yet, Sayid was falling in slow motion, slipping through the light, feeling its _presence_ , its _touch_.

“Jacob...!” he called out, squeezing the pair. Immediately he felt an immense love holding him, soothing him, dissolving his boundaries, accepting him into itself, a presence made of love and light.

 _I am here_ , said a voice in his heart. Sayid knew this voice, deepest ocean, _the one far below_... and now that of each of the brothers, all as one.

"It all springs from You," he whispered aloud, his words meant for Jacob.

“Follow me,” said the voice, bringing every part of him into the present.

“I will,” Sayid answered. He felt that everything he had ever desired was met in that moment, and by one thing.

Divine love.


	10. Closer than close

Sayid was wet, and his mouth rasped with the alkaline taste of sediment, crunching slightly between his teeth. He realized his eyes were closed and opened them. There was no difference. Then he noticed tiny dots of light rippling above him, magical. They seemed alive in the close darkness.

He sat up carefully, reaching towards the little lights, finding them to be out of reach. He turned slowly, finding unseen a little rivulet of flowing water at his feet. A gentle flow of air moved over his wet and naked skin, coming through a nearby opening where a steady light from the other side caught the surface of the moving water, reflecting the tiny ripples of light sourced from beyond, beckoning him.

He stood, and walked across the little flow of water toward the source of the lights, a beautiful blue light.

The dark floor of the cave was silky smooth under his feet, the path of the silent water flowing, and Sayid kept his eyes on the light as he made his way to it, then crouched down to touch it, gently swirling the water with his fingers, his impulse to smell the water, bringing it to his nose, instead placing his fingers cool and sweet upon his lips, a soft kiss.

Immediately the low archway seemed to open around him, and he stood, somehow finding himself near the center of a much larger cavern gently bathed in the subtle blue light, shimmering as though reflected from a circle of unseen water. He stood in a little stream that was channeled outward in a little dip in a large circular structure in the rock. In the center of this structure, which seemed to have been hewn as one being from the living rock, there was large column of a different stone, inky black, its surface perfectly smooth, its shape slightly rounded at the top and perfectly round from top to bottom.

Sayid recognized these carved symbols of the divine from his familiarity with Hinduism, and especially the Shaivism of Northern India, near his relatives' home in Pakistan.

“It is a _shiva lingam_ ,” he said quietly, his voice close and amplified in the cave. He looked up, where he could see that there was a gentle waterfall, a continuous trickle of water from an unseen source in the darkness above. This water bathed the entire _lingam_ with a continuous flow of water, so that the the column of black glistened with tiny touches of the blue light on the sheeting water, appearing to dance slightly, to shimmer as though alive.

Sayid heard his own intake of breath as he was overcome by the knowledge of _presence_ , of divine presence in a divine and secret place, revealed to him, _present with him._

 _Thou..._ He could only pray, reach out with his heart.

 _Thou..._  he reached out with his heart, _knowing_ an all encompassing being of love, beyond sacred, beyond form or words... 

He knelt and made _salat_ with his forehead in the cool water, his lips moving, wet from the water just below them. _A way to make worship,_ his thoughts were almost gone. _Is worth more than all that is precious._

He found a kindling of deeply familiar warmth and love in his heart, something always there, mislaid, now expanding endlessly within him. He _knew_.... and was known. 

 _Allah..._ _My God._  He would never forget again.

 

Sayid far flung and unbounded by creation came back, his body slipping around him as consciousness, his consciousness returning with a certain taste on his tongue, a current slipping through him as a single breath, a sudden sigh.

 _Here_ was his forehead against the rock in the sweet water. He sat up. He had gone through a day's worth of prayers, a lifetime of prayers. Lifetimes...

 _"I am still here..." he whispered. You are still here..._ He had never been alone.

 Sayid pictured the Island from above, coming up to him as he flew down to it, a most beautiful form of the divine. _I am yours,_  he offered himself, filled with a new purpose. _I will..._ he felt his willingness sweep through him, creating a certain freedom.

 Sayid looked around, making a memory of every part of the cave.  _No one approaches this place_ , he looked up at the place where the blue light gave way, the walls dissolving into the darkness of the unseen. _A cave with no entrance._ _A hidden place, always present._

 _The cave of the heart,_ a familiar phrase from Hinduism. _There is no place more sacred than this place_. _A_ _nd yet... it is always closer than close._

 

Sayid realized that he was laying in the little stream, his knees tingling from kneeling on the wet rock, his wet hair swimming around his ears, the taste of the calcified, alkaline water on his lips and in his mouth.

He found that he was crying, silent tears slipping onto his wet cheeks, joining the water flowing with him and past him, a flow that he felt was assuredly made for him, his part of an endless sea, the flow of creation, made of love.

Sayid felt other currents slipping past him, tasting him, knowing him, loving him. He began to see images in his mind, golden, dancing images. Love as light. Candle light... and lamps. He recognized Jacob's little room, next to the temple on the smaller island. Was it still near?

Yes. James and Jacob were there, they were together on the bed, dancing with the movements of pleasure, of heightened desire and breathy intimacy, their eyes closed as they kissed, as they reached out to him inside. They were connected to him. They partook of his experience of this divine place.

“ _Sayid_....” he heard in his mind. Their love was made for him. They were joined in a passion. And their passion was the immense fire of purification which had burned away all that he had carried as a burden, all that he brought to this place, the Island.

Thoughts of his life there brought him back to his body, and the water flowing around him, over him. He was floating in the touch of this water, for it _touched_ him... it loved him, it was presence. It cooled the fires that had burnt so much away. The fires had purified him, prepared him. _For what?_

The presence as love flowed over him, through him, with pieces of him slipping away, memories and emotions that were limited and strange to him. He let it all go. Arise and dissolve. The flow... the flow...

 _My brothers..._ the brothers who were loving each other, that were loving him. He _knew_ the divine life force that sparked and burned in them as they joined, their bodies taught with the building pleasure, a slow and steady dance, shared, with no slowing, straight on... though the top was ever farther and farther, they were full of more pleasure and heat, more... and more.

 _This is how we are one._ Sayid stopped his thoughts, his understanding hovering, then nestling at last where his _want_ was prepared and waiting.

 _Sex?_ He knew it was true. 

 _Sex is how I was prepared. It is how I have joined them... and have chosen to remain._ _Love completes us, our sex binds us to each other._ _That is why we can serve._

 _Who do we serve?_ he wondered then. He felt that he understood everything up to this moment, but nothing after.

“Who do we serve?” he said aloud, sure that the answer was now his.


	11. Something very different

Sayid was bent slightly, following the gently flowing water just deep enough to cover his feet. He felt along the rough walls of the little passageway, completely dark, completely silent. He didn't know where he was going, only that he knew this was his path, the only path.

After a time, he began to see a very tiny light shining in the distance, illuminating the walls and the flowing water of the passageway. The passage dipped, widening beneath the water. He could see the light clearly now, shining up from a distant, unseen opening. The top of the passageway dipped as it continued underwater.

He peered through the crystal clear water. A beautiful, clear light of golden green danced there, the essence of life itself. He could not tell how far to that light, or how large the opening, but there surely was an outlet for the water, a spring.

He stepped down into the deeper water, testing the current, then stood regulating his breathing, oxygenating for a dive, a skill he had learned as a soldier.

Sayid slipped under the surface, swimming with the current towards the light. Flowing, flowing the light getting brighter, the water so clear as it transported him back to life at the surface, a world coming to him as he dipped up at last through the surface of the water, a tiny wave rippling out from him as his head came slowly up out of the water and he could breathe again.

There was no one, no sound out of place. He was alone. The tiny ripples from him had found the far edge of a little pool in the shade of a rocky overhang hung with trailing creepers and vines, veiling Sayid's view of the green forest canopy beyond. 

Sayid waited, enchanted. Dragonflies dipped repeatedly upon the surface, then dancing together, disappeared as suddenly into the air above. Familiar birds sang and dipped in the nearby trees. A lone frog announced its presence, a single syllable song amplified by the little alcove, echoing on the still water.

 _What is different? What is the same?_ Sayid did not know.

 _Where am I?_ Sayid drifted to where the water tumbled over some mossy rocks, dancing away through the trees. He winced in the bright sun as he looked up at the blue sky, verifying the position of the sun, finding that the ledge was facing south.

Emerging from the pool, the air was misty and rich with fine water droplets. Guessing the source, Sayid walked into the little bit of jungle, stepping carefully without his shoes. Just as quickly the forest ended and Sayid emerged from it onto a rocky ledge, the water soaring as a little waterfall, misty soft in an updraft, finding its way at last onto dark rocks far below.

There was no way up or down from this oasis on a cliff, but Sayid felt no concern. He stood in the warm sun, feeling the water droplets gather on his skin, then running down, dancing on him, playing in the hairs on his face and down his arms and belly.

 _There is something different,_ he thought. _Something very different._

He looked around, up at the sky. The light was different, the focus of his eyes. He looked at his hands, his arms, legs and feet. _Something_...

He lifted a foot. Sayid stifled an exclamation of surprise, ever the soldier.

He lifted his foot again, just a little. Immediately he was lifted up from the ledge, just a little.

“I can fly,” he said quietly. "Without help." He was trying to arrange this knowledge in the neat, practical way of a man who organized everything this way.

Sayid experimented. He lifted his foot fully, allowing himself to drift up very slowly, so that his other foot came off of the ground and he was hovering in the air.

He remained for a few moments, finally allowing him self to be fully exhilarated and ready to....

 _To do what...?_ he thought, almost an aside.

Immediately he was back on the ledge. He promptly fell down.

He cursed in Arabic. He scooted back from the edge of the cliff, laughing at himself, laying back in the low grasses, looking up at the sky, which seemed to shimmer, to shimmer for him. After a bit, he sat up again, coming to his feet, remembering what he had done, how he had begun _to fly_...

He lifted one foot, and hovered lightly in the air, thinking about his next move. He kept his mind fully disciplined and focused on his new skill, deciding what to do next. _My intention is to...._

Immediately he was on the great ledge in front of the temple. He promptly fell down.

Two brothers roared with laughter, insulting his manhood. James obviously relished adding Sayid's favorite taunts in Arabic.

Sayid lifted his head and looked at them, then around at the trees and the huge cliff of rock above the temple. He was there. Now he was here.

“You need to work on your landing, _Dragonfly...”_ Jacob observed as Sayid got to his feet, rubbing his naked butt, brushing it off. He turned to them something new, someone new, and the brothers stood, walking to him, hugging him, pushing him affectionately, then grabbing affectionately, so that he pressed fiercely against them, stopping their hands, communicating his bliss, the ecstasy of reunion.

Sayid was thrilled as the brothers encircled him with their arms, holding him between them as they too became quiet, talking only with their eyes and their breath. 

At last they stepped back from Sayid, reaching their hands to him as they stepped slowly backwards, drawing him with their eyes. Sayid reached to them and felt an immense rush of energy coming up through the Island, through his body, his spine, his sexual places and his mind. None were different from the other.

They stopped and smiled, then closed their eyes, and Sayid closed his eyes as well, _knowing how_. He opened his eyes in their room, standing steady with his lovers in the rays of light from the windows above, their faces and eyes happy, their smiles and their touches on him a wordless delight in him and his new prowess.

Jacob turned to lift an old bottle sitting on the desk, filling three old glasses, handing one to Sayid and one to James.

“Drink, Sayid,” he said. Sayid drank the cool liquid, not quite water, not quite wine. The brothers savored theirs, and savored watching his reaction. For the second time in this day he felt a change in himself, in everything about him.

Sayid looked at Jacob, beginning at last to understand. Jacob waited, smiling at Sayid, waiting for the right moment to speak words reserved for a certain occasion, planned so... so many years before.

“Sayid. Sayid. My Say...” He looked into Sayid's eyes for a long moment, holding them with his own.

“Now you are like me.”

 


	12. Show me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> threesome, m-m-m sex, spiritual sex

 Sayid stood in the center of the room. Hi lovers were happy and relaxed, waiting for him, following his lead.

Sayid looked at the wall where the passageway had been only hours before. He could see the passageway beyond, though he could also see the rock that disguised it. Further down the passageway he felt again the bliss and pull of the blue light coming up through the rock, coming now to find him, never forsaken, never alone.

_What are they? What are we?_

Sayid touched Jacob, grasping his arm with his hand, feeling it. He could feel his hand touching Jacob, and Jacob's arm feeling his touch upon it.

 _Woah_ ... he thought. _Woah_.

Jacob stood as Sayid touched him in various places, lost in the combined sensations, mapping them inside, a new understanding to match a new world around and inside of him.

He rubbed Jacob's spiky tangle of hair, then breathed hot on his face as he brought his lips to Jacob's.

 _Sex_ ... Sayid thought. _Everything comes down to this joining._ He pressed his lips upon Jacob's so gently, Jacob's nose and open eyes so close as he opened his lips slightly, as Jacob opened his lips, offering him his tongue. There was a gentle dance, and Sayid became overwhelmed with pleasure and desire.

Jacob held him up, still looking into Sayid's eyes, bringing Sayid's lips back to his own.

Sayid felt a warm brush upoon his shoulders as James touched him, slipping behind him, his head against Sayid's neck, holding him against Jacob.

“I am here between you,” Sayid said.

Sayid became more confident that _this_ was real, that it was his, not just a moment followed by are return to  _before_. He felt his body and mind melting in a pleasure and bliss beyond anything he had ever felt. He chose this, he allowed it, he claimed it.

“Where is Ben?” he murmured as the brothers kissed his face, his shoulders, his hair and his hands. _Why do I wonder?_ He thought.

 _Shhhhhhh_ the brothers said as they caressed him here and there so lightly with their hands, communicating their growing pleasure and desire.

Sayid still spoke, in between moans. “You are so old.... so... that you have joined completely.”

Jacob caught Sayid's lips with his own, giving Sayid intense pleasure as he communicated his own with the tiny movements of his lips and chaste tongue, eloquent and sweet.

“Will I join with you both completely? Some day...?” Sayid managed before slipping back into the gasps and moans of a gentle pleasuring.

“Yes, my love,” Jacob answered. He pressed his erection against Sayid's lower belly.

Sayid's sharp inhalation of breath and long, pressured moan communicated and caused the same level of excitement in both brothers, which was immediately answered by the same amplified feelings in his own body. Amplified again, and again.

Sayid could not hold back. He ejaculated against Jacob with an explosive surge and spurting with an unprecedented pleasure that was immediately shared and amplified between the three. Sayid was silent, standing completely still between the brothers as he squirted again and again, focused on the hidden movements in his testicles and penis.

Sayid felt limp, his legs ruined. The brothers took him to the bed, pulling back the covers, laying him like a child in the middle of the bed, joining him as his teachers and protectors, guardians of his potential.

Sayid's breath was still uneven as he floated in bliss, sighing over and over as his body was traversed by waves of ecstasy, his mind still and alive with pleasure, his body glowing as it found its rest.

“I am between you,” he murmured. The brothers nestled against him, silent.

“I know, at last...” Sayid managed to find words again. “Together we are separate. Without me, you are one...” he drifted, remembering the ecstasy of his orgasm, the sexual arousal returning with the memory, his mind almost finished with words, leaving them behind again.

_And the Island needs two... that is me. Everything has changed to include me._

The brothers lifted Sayid's arms, crossing their own arms behind his shoulders, turning towards him, laying their heads against his, the brothers each touching and stroking Sayid's arms, chest and belly.

“Sayid...” they said, almost whispering. “Sayid...”

Sayid closed his eyes, for he felt something unknown, he felt them inside, encircling him, gently nudging at his core, his center, seeking entrance.

Sayid closed a little to them, alarmed. He opened his eyes, focusing on the rock ceiling, the familiar patterns there. _What is happening to me?_

“Sayid...” Jacob said, his voice so sweet to Sayid. “Be like us...”

“Be like us...” James said, his lips at Sayid's ear.

Sayid felt a need to be joined with them, one that he had felt growing in him for some time, but did not understand.

“I will...” he answered quietly, opening and softening inside, _allowing_ and _welcoming_.

The brothers encircled him again, inside, seeking entrance to the center of his being, and slipping inside with a sure knowledge of what that meant, and what would be next.

“Oh...” Sayid said, his voice distracted, his eyes closed. He felt the brothers encircling without and within at the same time, and now joining him at the center, where they _knew_ each other. There were three currents of bliss, and they each tasted and felt a little different. Sayid was one of those currents, always between the other two.

“You are holding me,” he said, his voice giddy, wavering. “Between you...”

“Yes, Sayid,” Jacob said.

“Yes, Sayid,” James said.

Sayid realized he was crying, slow little tears of wonder slipping down his cheeks. He felt that _separation_ itself was taken away. Those who lived and loved beyond an inner boundary had brought him over, and were holding him in this new place, surrounding him as he learned how to remain so, and not slip back into limitation.

“The Island... _the love_...” Sayid was overcome with a profound, ever-expanding love that was also uniquely _his_ , made uniquely for him by the source of all love.

 _Be loved, our brother, our love,_ both men kissed and caressed him. _Come home, now, our lover, our brother. Be with us... Be like us... Sayid._

Sayid realized that the brothers were silent, that he heard their words inside.

 _I will... I will..._ Sayid felt an unmeasured gratitude, a feeling of arriving back home at last. This moment was something that he was most grateful for, forever, and something for which all he could do was to simply say _thank you_ over and over, in his heart, to his lovers, and to the Island, his source.

_I know what this is, I have been shown, and now I believe._

There was no more need of sleeping, dreaming or planning. Everything Sayid had ever experienced led him to this moment. If there was ever a time when he thought he would be something else, or that home was anything other than this.... he was mistaken.

 _Show me_... he said inside, to the brothers and to the Island.

_Show me._


	13. You can hear me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> m-m sex, m-m-m sex, threesome, spiritual sex

Sayid was sure that he was not asleep, though perhaps he had been until this moment. He questioned all that he knew. He reached for destiny. He clawed at the cobwebs of doubt and desire that had obscured the many lifetimes of his story, the belief that his life was happening to him, that he controlled each moment.

“I _know_ , _now_...” he said aloud. He sat up, and looked at his two lovers under the covers, gazing at him with surprised delight, their mouths open as they waited for what was next.

Sayid turned and pulled the covers off of them, admiring their bodies in the golden light of afternoon. He touched them, and soon they shared his excitement. Sayid felt his strength, a physical delight. He rolled Jacob and James together, so that they faced each other. He took them, one in each hand, and began to stroke and play with them as they watched, as they flexed their hips and buttocks with pleasure and desire.

Sayid reached for the oil. He poured some into each of his hands, then grasped each of them firmly, moving very slowly, covering their cocks very slowly in oil with a certain steady sensation of oil meeting non-oiled skin.

The brothers arched, grasping each other, pulling their lips and their hips together in a strong kiss of mounting pleasure.

 _Sex is about communication,_ Sayid thought. _Communication of pleasure... makes more pleasure._

James and then Jacob looked at him, their foreheads together, eyes soft and partly lidded, lips slightly open.

 _You can hear me,_ he said inside.

 _Only if you desire it so,_ Jacob answered, looking down at his cock in Sayid's hand, and at James', who was larger and also thinner.

Sayid was unconcerned. _This_ was what was normal, and his birthright. _Thoughts are always known alone_ was a version of reality gone with the rest of it. He found himself with those he loved, beings as men, beautiful and unclothed, with the confidence and complete relaxation of immortality, the certainty that everything would happen again and again.

Sayid began to rub the two men's cocks against each other, their hips moving together, back and forth their cocks moving through Sayid's hands and up and down against each other, a firm and smooth dance.

Sayid felt their increased pleasure, and how it added to his own. Three excited lovers became so very excited, and Sayid scooted forward, with his hand adding his own cock to the little knot of excited pleasure as they rubbed and slapped against each other in a passion of just barely coordinated movements.

Sayid's muscles quivered, his body suddenly slack. He placed his hands on each of the brothers, urging them together. He lay upon them, and began to fuck their hands. They made a little tunnel for him out of their two hands, the intimate sounds of loving close between their bodies where Sayid joined them with tumbling hair and greedy lips.

He lay on the two men, making the perfect movements of fucking. The brothers pulled and pushed on him as he settled into a rhythm that made them all sigh with intense pleasure, the pleasure of three. Sayid braced fully on them as he abandoned himself to his pleasure, making the fierce movements of commitment to release, gasping at the perfect coordination of three who could be joined inside, who had become one.

Before he could resist, the brothers as one lifted Sayid, laying him on his back where he lay gasping and complaining, pulling on himself, seeking any little relief as he accused with his eyes, then threw his head back in a breathy acceptance of renewed pleasure, building from a new beginning. He felt that he had cast himself under the hands that caressed and massaged him, finding his deeper muscles and the places that connected, that worked in opposition, soothing them into a willing surrender as Sayid drifted, floating with a bliss that seemed to hang on the very air with the sounds and smells of loving, a heavy layer of the essence of pleasure, the essence of love.noisely

Jacob moved leisurely, grasping and kneeling between Sayid's legs. James pulled Sayid's shoulders up onto his lap, caressing his face and chest as he watched Jacob touch and caress Sayid. The brothers came together in a kiss over Sayid, grasping each other's lips and tongue with their own, kissing loudly over Sayid as Sayid stroked James with his hand, closing his eyes, listening to men's voices calling out in whispers, a surrender to the fierce demands of pleasure.

Sayid felt Jacob _there_ , felt the desire and need in Jacob from his insistent pressure against him, from the way Jacob moved in little teasing movements, a promise made with a tiny back and forth of measured pressure.

Then the brothers leaned together, kissing again above Sayid. Sayid watched them; a slow heat communicated with deliberate movements of intensity, the sounds of liquid shared, of passion shared. James slipped his fingers into Sayid's mouth, and Sayid sucked at them as James communicated the kisses with his hand, their pleasure rising, more concentrated, more subtle.

Sayid felt Jacob's hips against him again, pushing into him a little, then a little more. Jacob pulled back from James' kiss, pushing into Sayid just enough to make Sayid desperate for more. He pushed all of the way, bumping against Sayid, small little bumps, getting deeper, claiming Sayid, taking him.

There was a long moment.... James caressed Sayid, his fingers wet from Sayid's mouth as he teased at Sayid's nipples and rubbed his smooth chest and belly. Sayid could see that the brothers were looking at each other, a look of such smoldering passion that Sayid reached up to them, touching their faces, their lips, _beautiful_...

 _You have sex all the time, in every moment_... he said inside. Sayid was enchanted. He could feel now the endless waves of ecstasy that emanated from his being, and he could feel it in them, as they must feel it in him.

He could touch the two men with this pleasure whenever he wished, without moving, whether near or far, offer to them the pleasure and energy of sex emanating from the area above his genitals, his sexual center. He had never made love to another with this energy alone, without touching. He had never willfully combined the sex energy with the love energy of the heart. It had happened to him, a profound sharing experience with another. But now he could choose it, _cause_ it. And receive it as he gave it.

Choosing it felt like the missing piece of a lifetime, settling into place at last.

Jacob seemed satisfied with Sayid's moment of reverie. He smiled down at Sayid as he pushed harder into him with the fierce little bumps, each demanding comment, a moaning declaration of need, a complaint of heat rising, of pleasure undoing every habit of restraint.

“I love you,” Jacob said to Sayid. These words and Jacob's voice in pleasure set off a new level of pleasure in Sayid, and he reached to James, who bent to kiss him, a long slow kiss that went with Jacob's careful pace of intensity building, a carefully assembled mix of sensations that kept Sayid fierce, his body tight, his breathing rogue and wanton.

James sat up, and was watching, watching Jacob fucking Sayid, his brother's body wet with sweat, his skin flushed, his body tensing and dancing with the rhythms of sex. James was watching Sayid's reactions, and feeling his physical pleasure _inside_ , always learning more about how Sayid's body was made, what his physical form made of the sensations and movements of pleasuring.

Jacob slowed, then stopped, and Sayid watched him with fascination as he remained kneeling over him, still inside of him, his eyes closed, his breathing patterned by subtle movements inside of him. His pleasure in filling Sayid outpaced his need to fuck, and he stopped for a moment, breathing hard, eyes closed. He was alone in a passion, the need to do something to Sayid that made him a creature of only _his_ intentions, that he possessed. Sayid was _his_.

Jacob began again, his movements a deliberate communication of intention, of seeking release. The men's heat and abandon became a frenzy, and was instantly near a common release.

Sayid shook his head, his curls flying, his lips moving as he cursed and tensed. He sat up suddenly, pushing off of Jacob, then grasping Jacob by his neck, he pushed his head down to the bed, moving to kneel behind him. He entered quickly, pushing Jacob's ability to allow entrance, so that Jacob made a plea of painful passion, then a moaning reply of relief when the pain turned to pleasure, _to the moment most desired..._

The moment of destiny.

There was a current of melancholy in the brother's pleasure that Sayid felt through them.

“James... James...” Jacob moaned, his voice punctuated by Sayid's strong fucking movements. James scooted under Jacob, kissing him and stroking Jacob's cock as well as his own. With slow hypnotic kissing and rubbing of faces together, so familiar the brow and forehead, the nose and cheeks and lips... the brothers knew that the moment had come.

Not their moment, for theirs was passing. The moment of Sayid.


	14. Only one

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> explicit sex, m-m-m sex, threesome

James and Jacob were looking into each other's eyes as a concentrated, tangled knot of ecstasy surged in and through them, pushing out through the very air. Their orgasms together filled them with a wave of intense pleasure that alternated and rippled through them over and over, so that they felt themselves falling into each other without a sound, without a need or desire or quest unmet in each other, a form of forever.

They were reaching out to Sayid _inside_ , sighing, urging him with their love and presence, with their knowledge of his requirements for climax and where to find and answer them in his mind.

Sayid reached for his release, feeling the brothers' love holding him, pushing against him. They loved him and they loved his _pleasure,_ following it to its peak. He fell onto them with a jerking and grasping that went with a sudden frenzy of climax, a full course of _all_ that demanded as much from Sayid as it gave, a storm of pleasure, a rogue wave pulling him under, turning him over and over in the liquid dance of loving, bouncing him on the sheets like waves on the sand.

 _Sayid_ .... their voices, calling to him in his mind, violently still and empty of all but the pleasure... and a certain knowledge... _something that waited for him._

 _Sayid_... their voices...

Sayid opened his eyes. He was laying partly on them, and partly on the bed, looking up. The ceiling rippled with fire, flames of blue and yellow.

The brothers moved to lay on him, holding him down.

The entire room seemed burnt up by the flames, a little house of rock with an immense mountain of rock above and below it, burned and falling, disintegrated... _disappeared_.

Sayid was desperate to move, to meet the forces of destruction with his trained response to action. Everything was gone. He could not move.

Then it was dark and unknown, and there was a savage wind, biting and cold, so loud that there could be no words with sound.

“Jacob!” Sayid commanded, searching for Jacob's reply in his mind. It did not come.

“Jacob!” Sayid said again. He was pelted by a fierce rain, his hair in his eyes and mouth.

“James, my brother...” he cried to James.

He knew their withdrawal. He was alone. He was falling then, falling and falling through the darkness and driving rain.

“COME...” he heard inside. The rain blew from a different direction, stinging his eyes.

“COME, Sayid...” a voice commanded. It was Jacob.

“WHERE?” Sayid was wild with urgency, still falling, falling. He felt his trained instincts slipping back from fear, leaving only trust, confidence and freedom absolute. He accepted all that was new in him, and did not look back.

Sayid sat up on the bed, his hair and skin soaked with cold moisture, held by two brothers, holding him.

Two brothers helped Sayid move to the edge of the bed, then stand, finding his balance. As they walked through the temple, Sayid regained some strength and coordination, striding with them, sure that he wanted what they wanted, went where they went, that it all somehow came to this.

He squinted in the golden light of sunset as they walked out to survey their view of the Island, and the liquid world beyond curving away to the sky. Two brothers remained a little apart from Sayid as he stood, finding a subtle rhythm in his calming breath, looking out over the smaller Island falling down to the white beaches, looking out over the ocean hugging the earth with no reason or concern. He turned then to the large Island beckoning to him from the West, near to where the sun was sinking slowly into the sea.

There was a very subtle bluish sheen to everything he looked at. Consciousness. Intelligence.

As Sayid looked at the world both near and far, tree and sky, grass and stone, he saw _nothing_ that was _not_ alive. It was all consciousness, a presence and an intelligence that dreamed, that dreamed everything, that made everything from its own being.

Sayid felt a breaking inside, as though he were an egg cracking, a sudden, single vision of movement followed again by stillness.

Three men stood, watching as the red delight of the sun moved up and around them in steady retreat, promising another day, stepping back from a certain gentle sweep of night slipping up from the horizon, like a living creature made of darkness and the promise of certain lights, the stars.

Sayid felt _breathing_ , the subtle movements of a single breath, in and out, a steady rhythm. He closed his eyes and merged with the place of this breath, _everywhere_ . A heartbeat, a pulse... _everything_...

As he breathed in, this breath was breathed out. As he breathed out, this breath breathed in.

There is only One, _there is only One_ ... he knew this, and recognized himself in everything he had seen or had not seen. He opened his eyes, glancing at his brothers, and _knew_ them. He remembered at last how he had become many, had created the illusion of multiplicity, a requirement for the ecstatic game of becoming that flowed from his infinite delight and playfulness, his unbounded intelligence and creativity.

_This is all made from the intelligence of one being, my source._

He turned his head to look. The brothers were smiling.

Sayid stood with his point of view as his constant. He _offered_ his senses and experiences as pleasure. He _offered_ his complexity as love to the undifferentiated being from whom he was made, the only being that was. He knew that every moment would now be his gift of love until he was at last taken back into his creator.

Sayid reached to his two brothers. He pulled them together against him, shoulder to shoulder, rubbing their backs as they watched together the last red light of the sun slipping up and over highest ridges at the Island.

“Tomorrow...” Sayid said, the brothers still standing shoulder to shoulder in the fading light, feeling the magic of the earth's motions. “I will take up the concerns of the Island.” He sensed again the melancholy mixed with happiness in the brothers' mood, the passing of something so old it seemed to exist as their very souls.

“My brothers...” Sayid turned, stepping back a little, looking at Jacob, then James. “Where is Ben?”

“He is waiting for you,” Jacob said. “At the base of the statue.”

Sayid looked at Jacob, remembering their first loving there, falling in love in a little outpost kept by those who protected an island.

“Ben waits... in our little cave?” Sayid was moved, wishing to protect something delicate and sweetly passionate, the coming together of two who were now one.

“My Say...,” Jacob reached to him, pulling him into his arms, his hand gentle on Sayid's neck as he spoke softly at his ear, “My love, you are mine, and I belong to the Island. Nothing here is ours.”


	15. A current of bliss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I skipped this chapter when I was posting chapters. I posted Chapter 16 as Chapter 15. It's fixed now. Sorry.

_Like falling in love all over again..._ Sayid felt saturated with love as he sighed and touched and touched and sighed with his two brothers who also caressed and kissed and loved him back. They lay on the bed for hours, hands clasped, skin to skin, drifting and waking with movements matching the sensuous rhythm of breaths and the furtive dance of their eyes, sometimes plainly offered, and sometimes shy, as humans are.

The men were dozing, and whispered between the little currents of sleep, the deeper breaths alternating with the sweetness of words, the confessions of lovers.

Sayid's bliss did not diminish, and this constant current of bliss had changed him, changed everything. Every moment he settled back into the One who lived inside him, his bliss soared yet again, and he belonged more each time to the source of that bliss and its agents, his brothers. The bliss was forever more than the sum of all he had ever belonged to before.

He lay upon the bed with his brothers, and knew then what he would be the moment he left this bed and went forth in the service of the Island.

Sayid's world was reordered. He felt light and playful. The fruit of his actions would remain always on the altar of his heart, a gift to his source, a form of worship. Each prize sought or reached for in himself he would give over to his source out of love. He knew only play, love, and duty, and he loved all three equally. Each moment would shape each of these in a certain measure. Each would be equally sacred when offered to his source as worship.

Sayid knew that the Heart of the Island was one with the Supreme. He was not surprised to learn that it pleased his creator to take shape in many ways, to form a multiplicity from the creator's being in every way, large and small. His personal form of the Supreme had found him, had bound him to the sacred place that lived as the Heart of the Island, his Creator as his heart's desire.

 

Jacob rolled away and lit a little lamp. The two brothers scooted from the bed, each moving as one who had a purpose. It was very early, and the breezes from the high canyons above flowed past the temple, a whooshing sound at the little windows still dark and unseen above.

Sayid enjoyed being alone, listening as the brothers attended to the temple, chanting and waving the little golden lamps in the little patterns made tall by the size of the temple, all framed by the dark arch of their room.

Still he remained alone, completely relaxed, but alert, listening to his own thoughts, following the currents of his impulses and feelings.

“I cannot wait,” he said aloud, not sure why he yet felt some reluctance. “I will go to him today.”

Sayid knew little of what his duty in service to the Island would be. He only knew that he was unfettered by limitations of movement, and all was revealed to him in the moment.

Sayid pictured Ben sleeping in the special little bed he had shared with Jacob, perhaps waking now and sitting on the cliff overlooking the dark water, waiting for the light.

 

When the brothers returned, they slipped into the silk robes, and Sayid sat up, reaching for his own. The three were smiling, as though having matching robes was a delicious conspiracy only they were aware of; one that remained as yet unnamed, a certain sweetness held in anticipation.

Jacob brought careful selections from his treasures from off-island, and they ate slowly, relishing the hearty food, then nibbling on the sugared dates, each with their focus relaxed and far-flung, a solitary wandering of three minds.

The birds had begun, and the windows above were just visible, a little string of squares lit by a strange combination of black shading to darkest blue, with the diamond stars still fully visible.

The three brothers dressed, and Sayid reflected for just a moment about the last time he had worn clothes. Jacob had filled Sayid's little pack with food and a flask of water. He also enclosed a few delicate presents for Ben from himself. James communicated his well wishes for Ben, hinting at a visit as well.

They stood in front of the temple. The rosy morning tempered as the winds died down, and far below the endless lines of white sea birds flew past the island, some closer to the water than others, each in a direction somewhat different from others, so the lines of birds seemed to cross each other, then break into the swirls of descent that changed their color from stark white to gray upon the water.

Sayid turned to James and hugged him, then kissed him lightly, looking into his eyes with his own warm and reassuring. He turned then to Jacob, looking into his eyes as well, finding a certain parity, and waiting until Jacob hugged him, then found his eyes again as Jacob stepped back just a little, acknowledging with a small nod Sayid's new sovereignty, giving him his blessing.

Sayid closed his eyes, and found the place that had gone with lifting his foot, a beginner's technique for a power he was only just beginning to explore.

Instantly he stood on the beach near the statue, looking out to sea.


	16. What we share

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the real Chapter 16

Sayid stood alone on the beach, looking out to sea. He stood in the morning shade, his hair lifting and lazing on the cool breeze. He was remembering _then_... when two lovers were finding their way to each other again and again, the sweeter way back to that one who had become home, like the sure course of sea birds returning with unerring certainty to their roosts.

At last Sayid turned to the statue, his bare feet crunching in the cool sand as he sought the way between the square base and the sea, following the little path that immediately turned and zigzagged up the rocky cliff, his sure feet sending little crunchy bits of scree down the rocks below him, announcing his approach.

“Ben...?” he said when he reached the ledge. There was no answer, and Sayid allowed himself the slightest touch _inside_ to find out if Ben was there, careful not to disturb him.

Ben was there, and Sayid guessed that he was still asleep. He smiled at Ben's nonchalance, that he could sleep in on the day when he knew Sayid would be coming.

He entered the cave, still dark in the early morning light. He closed his eyes... finding again the smell of damp rock, the muffled sounds of the waves... finding again the memories of his lovemaking with Jacob, the long moments and changing light of this place of loving.

Ben was a mound of curled up covers, his breath soft and even. Sayid set out some food for Ben and the little presents from Jacob, then returned to the beach, sitting in one of the little seats dug out from the sand, remembering again how his eyes had drifted out over the water and back again to his new lover's eyes, bluer than blue. They had shared this view, and that had forever changed it.

 

Sayid looked up, squinting in the bright morning light as Ben approached. They shared a smile, and Ben nestled into the other seat as quickly and efficiently as Sayid had once found an instant, practiced comfort on his couch at home in Iraq. Ben was still munching on Sayid's gift of breakfast, and offered some of the delicious smoked salmon, Jacob's favorite and so a regular treat from his travels. Sayid took a small piece, though he was not hungry.

Ben made conversation. “Will you go off island?” he asked casually, watching Sayid's response to an irrelevant question, casually wiping his hands together. He turned a little to Sayid, studying him, finding what was essential, guessing what had endured, that which he might use in his friend.

Sayid did not answer. Ben knew from this that Sayid meant to begin right away. _That's our Sayid, always down to business._ Ben abandoned all but the inevitable, his inner feelings a pair of intensely dismayed and strangely relieved.

Sayid could see Ben's jaw muscles flexing so slightly, the tilt of his back changing as he gave up the appearance of social interaction. Ben sat back, and they were silent for a time, enjoying the creamy, golden light on the clouds and the whispy white layer of air fully saturated with water just above the dancing whitecaps, dipping and bobbing, always moving, always seeking the shore.

At last Ben's voice was casual with a hard won steadiness. “Do you know yet, Sayid.... what it is we share?”

Sayid made a small sign with his hand, a mere flutter to anyone else. Ben said nothing, but Sayid noticed Ben's eyes slightly wider, a man who, barely containing his fear, forced himself to not look away, to not reveal his reaction. Sayid also did not look away. Ben persisted, though Sayid could see that this cost him more every moment he delayed.

Finally Ben looked out to sea, visiting other places in his memories, using them to occupy his mind during a long moment of catching up with his discomfort.

“I see your fear, Ben.” Sayid said.

“Of course you do, Sayid.” Ben replied, meeting Sayid's gaze with the self-serving focus and breathtaking intelligence he brought to every moment. 

Sayid could feel Ben's fear growing, a visceral alarm behind his words. Sayid knew well the sounds and the cadence of Ben's speech, somehow always deliberate and casual over an inner slaughter.

“Do you know what I was before you met me, Ben?” Sayid was still watching him, finding his way, letting it begin.

“You were a soldier,” Ben tried to steer the inquiry away from himself, away from the history they shared.

“Yes, a soldier,” Sayid stated, making the words, watching Ben.

“And a torturer.” Ben said, looking sharply at Sayid, feigning impatience as Sayid tracked his eyes, still wide with cold fear as Ben's mind slipped, and gave him up in a stunning betrayal.

 _This is what it means to be undone._  Sayid watched him, so close, Ben's mind so close, closer than close, vicious, made primal by his sudden lack of traction, the loss of filler in the now vacant place that he always kept filled with a plan, and a backup plan... always a plan. But Ben was silent. He had lost control.

“It was what I knew,” Sayid said, keeping Ben's attention as he simply watched Ben struggle, as Sayid sat confidently filling in the other half of everything he had ever known about Ben.

 _Not yet..._  Sayid was careful to not dip into Ben's mind, though he wished to seek there the little catches that would undo Ben's expert control, lift the covers tucked over the seething, disloyal parts of himself he had betrayed and burned without allegiance or even recognition.

 _He drives himself._  Sayid was watching. Deflection, control. A distraction when he could find neither. And there was nothing that was not a distraction from Ben's inner world of pain.

Ben was at war. He pulled every person he encountered into his silent war, some willingly, some without their knowledge. He oozed his own particular blend of poison everywhere he went.

Ben was lies, heart break, murder. He was a menace to all he had contact with. He had forced at great cost the war of control within himself, and replaced real confidence with the ready intelligence of a ruthless, expert control of others. He played others the way he had played his own terror, and achieving his goals, left them with the ache and horror of what they had done for him, weakening them, rendering them incapable of retribution--as he had done with these parts of himself.

 _He drives himself, with no pity or mercy._ Sayid remembered those of the house of Israel, those who were enslaved, who were driven before their enemies with no rest or mercy.

All because they had worshiped God as _this_ , instead of _that_.

 _It was not the God that was found wanting,_ Sayid thought, knowing that there was nothing that was not God. _It was the worship. It was what they worshiped inside, in their hearts._

And Ben worshiped pain. Pain that answered pain. He was already lost, but the Island had still accepted him.

 _And now.... I must find him._ How different this was from the way he had given himself to Jacob, a surrender of love. Ben's surrender would be the end of his worship of pain. 

Sayid remembered then what James had done for him, his realization of how much it had cost him, the state of him when he returned to Jacob. Sayid had witnessed the days of healing before James shrugged the wounds off at last, wearing a new skin, loving Jacob, loving Sayid.

“The Island has accepted you, Ben.” Ben' mind was already teetering, and he was now caught off guard, utterly confused, a certain tightness in his posture released so suddenly, his eyes stinging as he gasped, bringing his hands to his breast where his heart was pressing open as the font of his tears. Crying silently, Ben sat looking down in shame as his tears dropped one by one into the sand.

Sayid's watched Ben cry with his own depth of emotion, a visceral sense of purpose just beginning, steady and pure and deep from his heart. A quest that was not really about Ben at all, but almost entirely about how Ben would become his, his to give to the Island, Sayid's first task in service to his source.

“You have chosen me, Benjamin Linus," Sayid said softly. "You are mine.”


	17. Be mine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> brief m-m sexual interaction

Ben's tears had stopped, but he was still bent forward, the small motions of pain in his sobs replaced by the ragged motions of breaths yielded and spent.

“It would not have me,” Ben said finally, a statement and a question, his voice so very sad.

“Why?” Sayid asked.

“ _Surrender..._ ” Ben spoke this one word as though he was both answering and coaching himself. “What keeps happening to me... what has always happened to me.”

“You have not changed your outward life,” Sayid said, thinking aloud. “But what of your heart?”

Ben sat up at last, wiping his tears and snot with his shirt, laughing at this small social transgression compared to the largest of transgressions. Larger than greed, or even pride; his inability to choose well, to accept grace, infinite grace.

Ben relaxed into his seat and looked at Sayid, openly studying him, looking again for what was essential about him, what had remained from his recent transformation by grace. Ben felt himself slipping back into falseness in his appearance and motivations, and a few more tears began in his eyes, tears of despair that he wiped away quickly, looking away.

Sayid reached to Ben, touching his cheek, still wet with tears. When Ben looked again, Sayid's eyes and entire posture clearly offered the wealth of love he sought to give to Ben, to teach Ben to accept.

Ben knew he could have all of this and more. He knew Sayid's love was his. He wanted to touch Sayid's hand, to smile and accept Sayid's immense love. But he felt his own face and eyes only false, and felt that he had already begun to give up, to back away from this narrow ledge between his despair and the hope he could not sustain on his own.

“Let us walk,” Sayid suggested. “Will you walk with me, Ben?”

Ben seemed surprised, as though he remembered again that Sayid was there for him, and would take Ben where he went.

Sayid stood, stretching. He turned to offer Ben his hand, who wiped his own moist hand on his pants. Sayid smiled, and Ben also smiled at last as Sayid helped him up. Sayid waited a little before letting go of Ben's hand, and this physical contact felt pleasurable to them both.

Sayid whispered something in Arabic, as though to the waves as they walked down to the water, and then along the wet sand at the dark reach of the waves along the shore.

Ben was soothed by his love of home as they walked slowly, finding an easy rhythm that lent itself to a carefree optimism, something Ben had somehow found in his life upon the Island.

At the end of the beach, Sayid led the way into the trees, finding the little bed he had shared there with Jacob. It was overgrown now, and Sayid cleared it away, reinforcing the crunchy soft layers below, arranging the softest and largest of the new leaves on top.

He watched Ben casually as he moved about. He could read Ben's despair still pulling him, his sharp intellect measuring his inability to respond to another, a lack he had concealed with a practiced skepticism and callous manipulation of others.

“Will you come down to me, Ben? Just to touch and be touched?”

Ben hesitated, then nodded slightly, unconvinced. Sayid had slipped down onto the bed, laying on his back, enjoying the morning sky above, letting Ben find his way.

Ben stood for some time. _He may not come to me without help_ , Sayid thought. Finally Ben joined him, laying next to him, also looking up at the sky. He closed his eyes as Sayid took his hand.

 _I will not challenge him at all,_ Sayid thought. _Not yet._

Sayid was pleasantly surprised when Ben kept hold of Sayid's hand, and began to speak, his voice wistful and smooth.

“There once was a grove... where a golden cave was hidden. Have you been there, Sayid?”

“Yes.”

“I was drawn to the golden cave many times over the years. I felt an invitation to appear... or a command.”

Sayid knew little of Ben's history and found it pleasing to hear of the way the Island had reached out to him.

“But one day there were no more invitations. And when I went to the grove, the cave was not there. Only the stream coming out from the rock.”

Ben paused before continuing. His voice changed, sounding so close, an intimate sound to his voice that Sayid had never heard before.

“I waited there. I had enough food for days. But the Island had closed to me. I was shut out.”

Sayid could hear Ben's broken heart, and waited for him to continue, but Ben was silent.

“ _When_ were you shut out, Ben?” Sayid finally asked.

There was another long silence. Sayid remained open to inspiration, to finding what was next. He reflected for a moment that this ease in waiting was now a virtue, when it once had been his skill in destroying others.

The tide was slipping out and Sayid's consciousness slipped and surged like the nearby waves slipping back out with a quiet jostling of foam and air finding it's way up from the sand. The golden light above danced green and gold with the leaves in the mild breeze from off the beach. The men were hypnotized by this display, and had fallen into a drifting state of contentment. And still Sayid waited.

“I will tell you, Sayid... but I can't begin. The _beginning_ of telling is so hard.”

“I understand,” Sayid said gently, squeezing Ben's hand. “We must be lovers, Ben. Only as my lover can you let these things go. I will flow into those places as _love_ , as the love of the Island.”

Ben gathered his courage and turned to Sayid, reaching to rest his hand upon Sayid's cheek, pushing back his curls lightly. He tried again and again to make eye contact with Sayid for more than a few seconds. Finally he held Sayid's gaze.

“Sayid...” he said as they made the language of love with their eyes. “Sayid...”

Sayid lifted his head, beckoning to Ben with his lips slightly open, his eyes slightly closed, their eyes for each other as their lips came together, just touching, their eyes closed then as they spoke love with the light dance of their lips and the slight searching movements of their hands, their motions of breath and the subtle movements of their bodies.

Sayid pulled Ben lightly, feeling Ben's barely taught resistance, his awkwardness with touching and with intimate feelings of being so near to another.

“You are mine... be with me,” Sayid whispered, kissing Ben so very lightly, again and again. “We will be lovers.”

At last Ben had relaxed and Sayid arranged Ben beside him on the leafy bed with Ben's head upon his shoulder.

Two men lay in the jungle, listening to the low dance of the waves and the buzzing of insects, the call of the birds. Sayid felt for the first time what it was to be newly whole and to first touch and feel the presence of another one who was still fragmented and ruled by pain.

“You are mine, Ben.” he whispered. “Be mine.”

 


	18. The years

“Come,” Sayid said, sliding off of the grassy bed, offering his hand. He could see that Ben was terrified, like someone who was about to have their hand lopped off, or someone behind a high wall that would have his throat cut the minute the enemy broke through.

Ben reached to Sayid, coming to his feet. His hand was sweaty, and his grasp shaky. Sayid helped Ben through the trees, then kept his arm on Ben's shoulder as they walked along the sand, steadying him, then releasing him as they came at last to the statue at the other end of the long beach and climbed the rocks to the little refuge above the sea.

Ben stood in the middle of the small entry room. He knew not at all what might be next, and this was so terrifying that he began to believe his wild emotions. _I am about to die,_ he thought. All because a man named Sayid had to come to the Island, and could somehow redeem him as others could not.

 _What will he do to me?_ He asked himself.

Sayid reached to Ben, steadying him. Ben was lost somewhere then, shutting down, and acquiesced to Sayid's movements.

Sayid took Ben's hand and led him into the little bed area, dark and smelling of aromatic herbs in the bed and bedding. He pulled the coverlet off of the bed, then pulled the covers down.

Ben stood with his arms crossed, as though he were cold.

 _Now_ ... Sayid thought with reverence, an inner prayer to his source for inspiration and skill. Sayid waited, then they stood eye to eye as Ben felt Sayid's touch, just a touch _inside_ , Ben's eyes revealing his sudden wonder. Sayid reached a little into Ben, taking up where the Island had left off, waiting for the Island to show him the way. He _knew_ the puzzle that was Ben, touching the pieces inside, arranged as they had played out in his past.

 _The years... the moments.... it all hinges on this,_ Sayid thought, following the threads from it through Ben's long years of self-hatred and misery to a certain moment.

Ben quickly suppressed awareness of Sayid's inner touch. _He has pushed it down, and defended the memory, all of it, making it distant... not real._

“Ben...” he said, his voice one of comfort and understanding.

Sayid reached so gently to Ben, still shivering and near tears, his eyes still wide as Sayid touched him. But Ben was gone, shut down with fear at last, and was now a little ways from himself, watching.

“Give me your hand...” Sayid reached to Ben's hand lifting it. He turned Ben's hand palm up and looked at Ben as he pinched firmly in the middle of his palm. Ben felt a molten heat break from a place near his heart and shoot down his arm into Sayid's hand. This fire felt like every terror pressing up and out at once. Ben exhausted all of his self-control by managing not to scream.

Ben was somehow still standing, balanced by Sayid's firm grip. Then Sayid helped Ben to the bed, holding him steady as he lay Ben down gently, arranging him to make room for Sayid. Ben closed his eyes, and Sayid studied him as he tread lightly inside again, looking for the shadowed home of this fear, seeking the secret that had enslaved Ben.

“Let me love you, Ben. Let me in.”

“I cannot...” Ben whispered. Sayid turned Ben onto his side away from him, then curled against his back, encircling him with his arms, keeping him safe.

“I love you,” Sayid whispered. “I love you.”

“No,” Ben said.

“Why?”

“I cannot say, I only know...” Ben stopped.

Sayid had traced the hopelessness to a place Ben immediately recognized, a molten pain contained and hidden. Ben was flooded with this pain, remembering for the first time the moment and the place where he had left himself and his allegiance to self behind.

Here were the words that went with the remembered decisions of necessity, from one who had faced sure destruction, the certainty of death to a child abandoned and alone.

_This part of me that yet lives as the sweetest desire of my heart, I will betray. These rare and fine expectations of my birthright, I will deny. I fold upon myself. I seek little, so that I will be more likely to survive. For without, I will be alone, and I will die._

Sayid held Ben as he cried, mourning the best parts of himself, walled away, a victim of a hideous betrayal... The images flooding into Ben's mind, where he found that he now had the strength to reexamine them.

Eventually Ben was quiet. With his keen intelligence he grasped what had happened to the child that he was, and to the man he was now.

_I changed the game... I bartered my heart. I was a child, it was a child's simplicity that I made to face the unfaceable._

Here was an old pain never finished, the boy that never matured, suffering outside of time, hidden under a dark layer of consciousness, unaware that Ben had matured and could now face these fears as an adult.

_I bartered with life. I traded away my expectations in life. I abandoned my potential. Every day I lived this way, to live, to survive._

Ben had changed himself in order to survive. He had traded the best part of himself away for the strength to continue, to make it across the dark chasm, splitting off from a challenge his mind could not contain. A child without help was lost, it had been so overwhelming that to endure it was to endure the very threat of death.

_I have made of myself a currency, and bartered for far less than the full measure of life._

Ben sobbed again, tracing his wounds, finding a very small consolation at last.

_I betray the most precious part of myself over and over in everything I do._

Ben was quiet again, drifting in a place of emotional depletion. “Now you can be a child,” Ben whispered to himself, to the wounded part of himself, the oldest part. “I will face this horror. I take the burden from you. I take it. I will take it from here.”

 


	19. What became of you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brief m-m sexual interaction

Sayid pulled Ben's clothes from him, a thing among things—sun, sand and wave—that immediately ceased to exist, so close Ben was to the moment, to what was here: a familiar dark corner of everything that held a little bed and a little man, two little men. Nothing more.

Ben's skin was newborn, the air cradling him in a quickening birth of touch. He sighed as he stretched on the bed, arching his back as he flowed with the exquisite bliss, filling him, moving him, entering him wherever Sayid touched him, firmly or softly, push or pull.

 _“Ben...”_ Sayid whispered to him, his voice a curling current of desire, touching the best of the inside places, gathering and joining them in the current of excitement.

 _“Haaa...”_ Ben breathed out, his long breath sounds making room for more pleasure.

“This is love...” Sayid said as he caressed Ben inside with a point of tingling warmth that floated, waiting. When Ben found that he could move the pleasure, he did not hesitate to move it to the place that made the most pleasure, the place just above his genitals, near his spine.

Sayid smiled as Ben was sighing, each sigh a complaint with a bigger sigh the answer, a steady build of exquisite tension in his body, and a promise of ultimate release the guarded possession of his mind. Sayid caressed Ben's spiky hair as Ben arched against him, not thinking of Ben as a boy sexually, but loving the boy in him, knowing that Ben was new to this level of love and of physical loving, and that it healed him, a gift from the Island.

Sayid continue to caress Ben _inside_ as he rubbed his belly, just touching his erect penis, knowing how unbelievably pleasurable this was, smiling again at Ben's reaction.

Ben was allowing, surrendering, reaching to the pleasure, reaching to his new place in the world and service to the Island. The fire of desire and pleasure was softening him, dissolving his braced and brittle skills of deception and fear, replacing this with the free flowing energy of the life force at play. 

When Ben orgasmed, Sayid felt Ben reduced to _one_ , committed to one, made whole as the one who might now be honest with himself and others.

When Ben lay sated, his mind still, his body overcome and undefended as Sayid caressed him tenderly, playing again in his hair, hugging Ben against him with loving delight. "You have opened your heart to me, Ben," Sayid praised him, hugging him warmly. "This time will be so different..." he promised, and Ben believed him at last, knew at last that he would be loved, that he would love.

Then Sayid shifted away from Ben, aware of _another_ , making room for the one who carried the intention of the Island, the one who appeared now between them, his back to Sayid as he took possession of the one who had once been rejected.

“James...” Ben said. James did not allow Ben to turn to him, soothing him back into place. 

“James. I will say 'yes' this time.”

"Soon, my love," James' voice was soothing. “You are not free, yet. You cannot give yourself.”

Ben relaxed, his mind again between fear and hope, standing again on the ledge between two options his life had rekindled in him.

Sayid felt James begin, and moved to the other side of Ben, holding him with closed eyes, joining in the damp darkness of it, the strong smell of mold, golden green light leaking in around the boarded up windows and through the torn curtains, the air stale and absolutely still. Ben was this young child, a boy at play, his clothes ragged and too small, his hair long and shaggy. He lay upon the bare floorboards, playing with tiny rocks, baby teeth, and bent and rusty nails, sailing across the floor in circles, climbing them over each other like big machinery, moving earth and steel and each other.

This boy made the little sounds, the growl of diesel engines, the crashing of rock. He made the voices, the phrases of men at work, ones he had learned of _before_. “Okay Joe, let's go over there.” “Okay Joe, we're moving this dirt.” “Look out Joe...”

Everyone in Ben's little world was named Joe.

Ben played and played until he was weary of the same game, then he sat up and put his hands over his face, blocking out the tiny shafts of morning sunlight, summoning the other parts of his imagination for company. He peeked again at the golden light, measuring an entire day's advance and retreat until the darkness came, when he could sleep for a whole night of unconsciousness, away from this empty room with no one in it.

Sometimes he dreamed... a personal joy that whispered as the soft wind on his skin. The excitement of running through tall grass. Running. For a moment when he awoke, he remembered the smell of trickling water, the feel on his hands of slick mud pressed into battlements and a dungeon pit, the crack of rough stems bent into a barred hold for insect prisoners.

No people... _No world._ Being shut away was worse than being alone. Here there was nothing, and no one. Ben hadn't thought to count himself as a person. _People_ talked to each other. They went places and did things... he still had rough memories of this. He still believed that those people were out there, though they didn't know he existed, here.

Now the only person he saw was his mother, who unlocked the door to the room and wordlessly placed a tray of food on the floor, replacing the bucket with an empty one that touched the floor as the handle dropped with an anodized aluminum “clank-clank” before she turned and left, locking the door again, her steps retreating, the distant sound of her washing up before she went back to the TV.

Years later, when Ben would hear the sound of a metal bucket against the floor, the handle dropping onto the rim of the bucket, the certain sound carried him back to the years when he was lost in his mind with no stimulation, no learning, no shared etiquette or social provisions building into a future of interacting with others. Only his intelligence had kept him sharp as he created worlds and events populated with imaginary adults interacting, serious and determined, focused only on their goals, never on each other. 

There were no children in Ben's fantasies. This had not seemed strange to him at all until years later, when he watched children play together, and realized how foreign play _with another_ was to him, and how this had left something empty in him that life required each person to fill when young in order to be a social creature.

There came a day when the years of depression and sadness and bone-aching loneliness Ben carried he had turned over in his mind at last, and only once, when he was a young adult. At the very moment there was enough of him that _hadn't_ lived that life, he buried a hundred thousand empty moments with a single heaving motion that smashed it all together at the bottom of his mind. He walked away, and never looked back.

He did the same thing to himself that his mother had done to him. He abandoned himself. He did not allow or acknowledge the wounded parts of himself. He compensated for them with the energy and promise of youth, for as long as these provisions lasted.

 

James and Sayid held Ben as he relived what happened to him, what had happened to Ben. He held it away from himself, watching from nearby, watching the pain and the tears that had finally floated up from an this inner fraud about some other boy, _dubious, not real..._  but somehow lifting a single, aching feeling of injustice in him, a sharp pain that stabbed deep into his heart. He pictured his mother putting it there, a dagger lodged by his mother's hand in one blow, extinguishing his soul, his remaining worth.

Immediately it all flowed up and through him. He was overcome. The scene was set, his past was all before him in a single tally of the cost of it, so much of his humanity, his willingness to care about others, his ability to really care about himself... the one who was lost.

This much Ben knew: no one knew of him, and no one knew what had happened to him. And this was what was unbearable, the real crime at his mother's hand. She killed him, again and again, taking all of him, conveying the reality of his death to him every day with this certainty of non-existence, hating him, suffocating him even as she sat still before the TV, negating him in a way that brought her a cold pleasure in every moment of every day.

And all that she must do for this pleasure was unlock his door once a day, to bring the tray of food for him and carry away the empty one. To leave a bucket for him, and carry one away. To lock up his room again as a practiced ritual, keeping him from the surrounding fields of the verdant green of the South, walled away from him by the boards tacked on to keep him in, and to deny him even a momentary glimpse of a world as wild and varied as his was sterile and singularly hard, empty and devoid of light.

He suffered this denial. But Ben still _knew_. He still experienced  _out there_. He dreamed of escape, which for him meant seeing what he could hear. A reverie of night insects. A bolero of birds soaring at the approach of sunrise.

There was the faint sound of the TV when she awoke, the sounds in the kitchen as she made their breakfast, the sounds again later as she cleaned up. He learned the songs of different birds, and eventually which ones migrated, listening for them to know the time of year. He knew the sound and smell of a coming storm, and the heart-stirring dance of the shifting winds pushing the grasses just out _there_ , rubbing them together in a mysterious whisper-like promise that there was a reason for it all, one that _she_ did not control, that _she_ could not vanquish.

Sometimes he heard the slap of the screen door, and the old car complaining as she forced it to run, to crunch over the gravel drive and roll with a huffing sound off down the lane that led to the road he barely remembered.

When she was away, he daydreamed the police coming to the house, finding him, making him point at her, her small body hunched in the police car, his terror as they took her away, overwhelmed by the horror of knowing he had betrayed her.

When she was away, he sometimes daydreamed that the house was on fire, and the firefighters came straight to his house, straight to him, their sirens announcing that someone required urgent rescue, rolling in a line up the long lane, and running without hesitation into the house. He could hear them breaking the doors into shards of spiked wood beneath their feet as they looked in every room. They broke into Ben's room, carrying him out into the piercing light of day where his mother stood, betrayed by life, betrayed by anyone who would release him and let him win, to let him live and thrive the way she never had, the way she never knew when in her childhood her father had done the same to her.

 

Ben curled tight against Sayid as he struggled in terror with these old feelings, ones that had always waited, and had come for him, up from the depths like the creature she had tried to destroy, the monster she had left and the one he had abandoned, coming to take its vengeance, to extinguish him finally _for deserving this_ , leaving him cold and dead and finally put away, but this time in the ground, her work finished at last.

Ben was quiet then. Every place of it all had been mapped and a light shown on it, how it all went together, exactly what it did to him, the price that had been payed. They held Ben as he lay still for a long time, feeling it all assigned a new meaning, and settling into a new place where it was the right size, the size that fit. Never again the cold fear pushing him under, making whole parts of him small and dark. Never again the terror cutting him open, cowering under his single blanket with his hands over his ears, certain death rolling towards him as the huge thunderstorms of summer, creatures as tall and as wide as the sky, one of many monsters that came at night, that came for him, that knew he existed and where. 

James and Sayid caressed him, and their hands joined to caressed each other's as they waited with Ben, protecting him and holding with him what he would not acknowledge to himself until now.

The sun was descending and lit the little windows with the golden light of late afternoon, warming the cave, dispersing some of the dampness, the sea breeze a delicious scent of all that lived in and came from the sea.

Ben turned over at last, accepting on his forehead the gentle kisses of Sayid and James, laying back with their arms around his head, their hands intertwined with his on his bare chest and stomach. Every part of his body was glowing softly, undone by an immense relaxation, a potential beginning in the very cells of his body, the call to begin anew in ways never conceived of. 

They listened to the world around them, and watched over the one whose world was beginning, until he tried to speak.

 _“I know...”_ Ben said, his voice cracking from a sincere surge of emotions.

He was quiet again, and there were more tears. A certain silence had returned when he spoke again.

“ _I know..._ mother _._ I know what became of you.”


	20. The desires that wait

Ben was singing inside. It was so easy to float on the silken currents of release and change that he felt slipping through him as he listened to the ocean's rush and evening's hush floating up to him _now,_ in the arms of love, the love of each other.

He lay beside them as they began, finding each other, saying _yes_ with their movements.

Sayid lay between them now, and Ben watched his back muscles flowing, moving his arms and shoulder blades, his creamy skin flexing with his movements of excitement and desire.

Ben felt that he knew what life was, and what it meant, his spirit soaring. _Everything_ was his and more. The desires of his heart had returned, lost until now in the slow murder of a little boy. Soon he would become something great, fulfill a great destiny, love a great love. His dry and empty soul was soaking in the taste of love, love for himself and for his brothers.

They had rolled against him then, a fervent wrestling, James and Sayid touching and pleasuring each other, pushing against each other with their hands and their hardness, holding back a little, finding the pace that would let them linger in the pleasure, filling each other with a desire to last for a time, to be only _this_....

Every sound, every movement against Ben was intoxicating. He watched them, worshiping their beauty, awed by their sure knowledge of each other. He reached to them carefully, touching, feeling the taut movements of their bodies, thrilling at the jerking, feverish motions breaking through, then brought back into their shared rhythm, the long, controlled stretch of building, building.

Ben watched them and touched them as he searched in himself for the Ben that went with _this_ , the making of love.

 _This_.... No, Ben had never made love. He had never understood sex. And now he knew that sex as love was the purpose of him, the delight of his thoughts, the most eloquent of images moving, images holding still, catching him, pulling him along. And his body was made for sex, his pleasures uniquely arrayed for another's discovery and delight, the gifts he most treasured, made ready for another to give back to him.

 _How can it be?_ he thought, trying to picture himself with a lover in this way, open and accepting of another's desire to pleasure him, ready to touch and to taste and nuzzle as fragrance what was offered to him, to hear his lover's breath and moans as he kissed and touched with love.

Ben looked at his own body, something he avoided. It was pasty white and lumpy, nothing like Sayid's glowing and muscled back flexing next to him, moving under Ben's hand as he touched him. He remembered when he last looked in a mirror, with strange eyes that bulged, a crooked nose and tiny mouth, his hair receding and an unruly crown of crunchy crabgrass for hair. He had come to value these things about himself, for they helped him to appear as a great many things he was not, an aspect of his mastery of manipulation which he valued greatly.

Ben smiled, ever accepting of his appearance. A very good disguise for an intelligence operative, which is how he thought of his work, his way of life. Still...

 _What if_ ... he was almost breathless at the thought. _What if I could share my intelligence and veiled intensity as a lover...?_

Ben pictured how he must look when he was in the middle of his latest plan, teasing the pieces into place, knowing that everything he desired could be his as he patiently shaped the events at hand.

Then he saw himself gazing at a lover, making his plans, waiting for his lover to join him in the silent, unseen passion that began with a look.

This was his beauty, and intelligence his form. He would find in another that which he might use to make them cry out, to make them beg as he withdrew. He would seek with his expert skills as an observer to find what was most hidden and most strongly denied, then taunting and releasing and demanding these very things, releasing and shaping and rewarding the deeper desires, the ones that wait and wait, for discovery.

Yes. He had not understood until now. Loving was an adventure that made the giver and the recipient more like all who loved; following the sure path of loving desire, shaped and shaping as they made of their common desires something rare and individual, to be gathered with the sure tenderness of brusque requirement. Loving was the great and common adventure of all who would love. To climb the highest mountain was to be one of the rare few. To truly share love was to join where all were joined, and say _yes_ to whatever waited there.

Sayid was calling out then, his voice aching with pleasure, his back tight as his movements became more purposeful and more derelict at the same time. Ben placed his hand upon Sayid's shoulder and was thrilled to see an instant communication of added pleasure, Sayid turning his head slightly, his body language changing, subtly inviting.

Ben guaged his own excitement as he pressed up against Sayid, feeling Sayid's pulsing back and body against the whole of him, Ben's head bouncing slightly against Sayid's upper back, Sayid's buttocks jerking against him. Ben grasped Sayid's shoulder and held himself against his body, loving James, picturing himself loving James in this way.

Sayid reached behind and grasped Ben, who felt himself exquisitely hard. He was already on the edge from so much that was exciting and new, and he could not hold back from Sayid's expert movements. Sayid stopped for a moment, and Ben realized Sayid was tipping at the edge, that he was waiting to bring Ben with him. Then they were falling, Sayid had tipped without movement over the peak of pleasure, slowly, slowly, then cascading, falling through the sudden frenzy his body demanded of him.

And Ben was falling, a long slow release with few muscle movements except for the delicious spasm and discharge of his semen and the uniform tightness of his body rippling as he came.

He listened to Sayid through it, listening to his breathy little cries followed by breathy moans, cut short again and again by movement as his body was moved from within, flinging any remaining social restraint aside. He was so beautiful, his movements and his voice so beautiful that Ben was deeply moved, and remained against Sayid as he felt himself finished, caressing Sayid and kissing his back and shoulder, Sayid still moving subtly from James' quiet movements against him.

Sayid rolled onto his back, and James buried his head in Sayid's shoulder as he came, silent as Sayid caressed his head and hair. James lifted his head, placing it on Sayid's chest. He looked at Ben and smiled, his gaze and expression fluid, unpressured, ecstatic. Ben could tell that James was pleased with him, and felt a rediscovered desire to please as well as to be pleased.

They lay together, no words, few thoughts, the afterglow of love.

 

 _What is next?_ Ben's mind kept at him, questioning. _Will I pass the test, become immortal, possess at last the secret at the heart of all this...? This is crazy..._ He still did not believe these things were real, that they were possible. Who could anticipate these kinds of questions, fathom their answers? Would he know the reason it had all happened, why the Island sought him, changed him?

 _No one could imagine this place, this drama_ , he thought, holding his dark laughter close, sharing it with himself, his only confidant.

Ben was watching himself. He watched this habit of secrecy in himself, unchallenged, a seeming necessity that lowered his expectations, discarded the need to thrive, kept him ever at the ready to cheat others, to cheat himself in order to cheat life.

_I am still secretive, I still seek the upper hand._

Ben felt James still watching him. Ben had betrayed no emotion, and for the first time in his life he wished this were not so.

“Are you finished, Ben?” James asked.

Ben thought for a moment, remembering how the dappled sunlight had played upon Sayid's face as he closed his eyes, falling into James' arms, how they carried him through the dark temple and back to the bed, lovingly arranging him under the covers, trusting him to the Island as they watched over him, then went outside to wait.

Ben smiled. Sayid had been so lucky to be unconscious, to remember in his dreams, to wake up already changed. _My bonfires have all been “eyes open.”_ Ben was amused to picture himself as a bonfire, his crispy hair dancing as flames. But today he did not recoil from the vast pool of sadness under his familiar smirk of irony. _No. My “fires” are cold. My karmas do not burn. They must melt. I must melt._

Ben somehow remembered an image on a TV screen that he had seen when he was a tiny boy. A monster named Frankenstein. The monster was hideous, sitting alone on the deck of a sailing ship surrounded by huge masses of ice, his face and body decaying while he was still alive, alone, forsaken by God as he waited for death. The image had filled him with an overwhelming, sickening feeling of inner decay and alienation from himself that drove him with terror day after day for weeks. He felt so ill that he could not eat, and mother had thrown his food away.

 _Before she threw me away..._ Ben realized he was crying. _Was that why?_ Ben had asked this question so very many times...

 _I'm not going to make it_ , _just like last time_ . He began to feel numb. _There will be no next time for me_ . He felt hopeless, stuck on a certain track, unable to change the course of his life and avoid the imminent train wreck of failing himself, failing his soul. _My life has all taken place at the junction of good and evil_ , he thought. _These my brothers are good, and sometimes evil, but I am always evil, I am evil. There is no hope for me._

So familiar this self-hatred, more of the aching sadness, the cold emotions easily masked by the cold intellect of unforced irony.

“No, James,” Ben confessed, somehow dead again inside. “I am not done.”


	21. Changed forever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter includes a memory of non-consensual sex/rape

The three men sat up, leaning back and stretching before crossing their legs, rubbing each other's knees affectionately, looking around the room, changing focus. Ben had already moved on from their loving and the soaring, hopeful flights of fancy. He had returned to his usual duplicitous self, displaying that which he desired to about himself, making up the rest as he went along.

They sat for awhile, and Ben sensed them waiting. James seemed to come to a decision. He reached to Ben and rubbed his arm, then lightly grasped his hand. Ben felt a sort of energy enter him. James leaned a little towards Ben as he spoke: “This is for you, Ben. To help you.”

Sayid reached to Ben, grasping his wrist, then twisting firmly. Ben found himself suddenly face down on the bed, unable to move without unbearable pain in his wrist.

“I did not see this coming, James,” Ben's voice was muffled, sarcastic, a combination of complaint and forced compliment. 

“I will be somewhat easier on you than you are on yourself, Ben,” Sayid said.

“It's because I can't sleep, isn't it?” Ben asked.

“What do you mean?” asked Sayid.

“You slept _during_... I cannot.”

“I have never slept, you have slept too much,” Sayid countered. There was an awkward moment where neither man spoke of what James had done to Sayid while awake.

Ben snorted, pressing his face into the covers in frustration, then settling into the awkward position, turning his face back to Sayid.

“Okay... now what? ...where is James?”

“He is here, he will returln.”

“Are you in charge these days, Sayid?”

“Ben... listen to yourself. I hear your pain, your fear.”

Suddenly they both stopped, holding still as they were drawn _inside_.

After several moments, Ben whispered: “Can you feel that?”

“Yes,” Sayid said, his voice dark. Sayid recognized this place, this energy in himself. “You have this inside of you, Ben,” he observed. "Why?”

“Well I wasn't fucked and beaten by my uncle.” Ben had to get Sayid's attention off of his pain.

Sayid twisted Ben's wrist hard, then pushed his face into the covers, pushing harder. He stopped, and when Ben smiled, there was blood on his teeth.

“Or _bit_ ,” Ben added, when he could speak again.

Sayid sat glaring at Ben, hurting, getting his anger under control as he remembered _then_... his uncle enjoying the excruciating pain in him, unable to hold still, unable to stand the pain of moving... always where he could hide the marks from his mother, knowing that he would.

“Did James tell you of this?” he asked, his voice controlled, noticing that he still could not bring himself to say the word “bite.”

“There was a time, when I was sent to recruit _you_ , Sayid. I could see into you, as you can now see into me.”

Sayid was intrigued, but did not take the bait. “I will not use what I know about you in this way, Ben. But I am going to find what is hidden in you.”

“Sayid! Dear Sayid...” Ben sounded light hearted, careful not to move his wrist, laughing with a desperate pleasure. “The Island needs _you_ , Sayid... apparently it needs someone to get the goods out of me.”

“The Island must need you, Ben.”

“I have no idea what for,” Ben was sincere.

“Does it matter?” Sayid countered. “Chosen or not chosen is all that matters.”

“I think the Island knows damn well that I need.... _something,_ or I'm worse than useless.”

Sayid leaned forward, brushing Ben's face softly.

“Ben. Tell me. Tell me how you came to be on this Island.”

“There's more than one answer, Sayid, and I've never favored one over the other.”

“Pick one,” Sayid prompted, twisting every so slightly on Ben's wrist.

“Stop that, and I will,” Ben said.

“No.” Sayid was relaxed, unhurried, no longer listening for James' return, knowing that he was alone. James would not return.

“Fuck,” Ben said.

“I am here to save you from yourself, Benjamin Linus,” Sayid said lightheartedly, regaining his composure. “For some reason, it seems that I am the only one who can.”

"I want James, where is James?" Ben protested.

"Your fear of me is why it must be me, Ben. This is the reason I am on this Island."

Ben pushed his face into the covers again, then turned away from Sayid, avoiding his gaze. _I am terrified of his gaze_ , he thought. He focused on the wall of the cave near the bed, finding fanciful patterns there. The wall of the cave was dry, but water-stained in elaborate patterns, like an earth tone watercolor, now with a subtle golden wash from the rays of light coming in from the windows above.

 _It is easier to begin this way,_ he thought, _as though I am talking to myself. Perhaps_... He did not know if he could begin until the very moment that he did.

 

Ben closed his eyes and _remembered_... sitting in the living room, playing with the little objects he called toys, his mother smoking and watching the TV. _There is something wrong_ , he remembered thinking. There was always something wrong, he could see it in her face, her body slumped and pushed into the sagging seat, braced there like a bug in a hole, refusing to come out.

 _Where did I get the toys?_ It had never occurred to Ben that the gathered "toys" or anything in the house belonged to him, except for his clothes, his old toothbrush, his highchair still standing in the kitchen, no longer used.

 _It is my fault._ It was always his fault; if only he could change it, if he knew what he had done. No, it was because of who he was, what he was. He was broken, nothing about him was acceptable. Here was proof: she suffered.

There was a time... _She had smiled at me_.

He stopped. Ben realized that he was not speaking. He was still looking at the rough wall of the cave, thinking to himself about that time...

“Continue, Ben.” Sayid almost whispered. He had removed his hand from Ben's wrist, and Ben rolled onto his side, his back to Sayid, rubbing his wrist.

The wall had changed. It was a dark mass in the fading light, the patterns no longer visible.

Ben closed his eyes, the memory coming to him like the sound of a distant car coming, one that can only come to you...

 

He heard the car in the driveway, loud in the evening stillness. Not her car; she sat here at the TV, suddenly attentive, standing to peek out of the curtains. The car crunched into the gravel drive, then sputtered and was silent. A car door squeaked, then slammed shut.

 _Crunch crunch_ came footsteps up to the walk.

She turned and ran at Ben, grasping his arm, dragging him into the back room, unused except for a few boxes piled in the corner.

“Don't you make any noise, or I will get the switch,” she said in a low, desperate tone that terrified Ben. “Don't you do it!”

She closed the door, and locked it. The unfamiliar sound of the metal key turning made him desperate. He could not get out, he could not get to her. Something very bad was happening. His sense of time changed, every second like a minute of horror.

And Ben was sitting in the dark, the windows covered with heavy curtains. He could smell the curtains decaying, hanging between him and the world outside, a huge world that could hurt his mother. The curtains seemed to taunt him, a menacing presence. Ben could hear his heart beating wildly as he scooted his back to the wall, putting his face and arms against his knees, listening.

A man's voice, the screen door opening, then slamming shut. There was something wrong with this voice, a kind of raspy, sputtering sound, with uneven footsteps heavy on the wooden floor.

She was saying _no, no no no_ , trying not to sound afraid, he thought. He heard her hit the floor, the kicking and slapping sounds. He pictured her trying to push him away, but... men were stronger than women.

He wanted to yell. Mother! Mother!! But he did not. She had said not to.

The man was wrestling with her, and she was crying. He could hear her quiet sobs, and it was a horror to Ben, that she should feel this, that this happened in the world, ever.  _He_ was hurting her, but Ben could not understand why.

He could hear his mother's low sobs, pushing up from her like gasps, beyond her control. He heard someone drop onto the couch, the sound of a cigarette being lit, his mother quiet now, still laying on the floor, moaning with pain.

Ben heard himself and realized that he was whispering, the sound very close in the tiny space between his knees: “...go away... go away... go away.”

 

The next day, she unlocked the door in the morning, pushing the door aside so that the bright morning light hurt his eyes. She tossed a blanket and a pillow on the floor, then placed a tin bucket in the corner. She returned with food on a tray, and a glass jug full of water.

She did not look at him. As his eyes adjusted he could see her face was empty and gray, her body posture one of pain and defeat. She _could not_ look at him, could not let him see her pain. She still had all of the pain, and it was terrible. She felt shame, she was defeated by shame, a shame that made him terrible to her. She could not forget if he looked at her. _He knew_.

She closed the door and locked it, her steps receding, the soft “poff poff” of her slippers on the living room carpet, then the TV with the sound a little louder than usual.

Ben sat alone in the darkness, not knowing when he would leave the room, or if he wanted to. He tried to understand, but he could not. All he knew was a cold terror. Each breath stung with a penetrating fear.

She was punishing him. Yes. He had not saved her. He was all she had, and he had sat alone in the dark while she was destroyed by an act of terrible consequence. Their world was broken, and he could never put it back. It was his fault.

 

Ben would learn who this man was, the man who had come to hurt her, taking the biggest part of her, smoking a cigarette before driving away, leaving Ben's life changed forever.

It was his father.

 

 

 

 

 

 


	22. Goodbye

Ben sat up from his blanket, almost coming to his feet. He knew what the sound was: a gunshot. He listened, his body tight, his breathing controlled and silent. He could still hear the _pop_ sound in his ears. There were several more shots, an evenly spaced, practiced rhythm, then all was silent.

He heard her coming in, the screen door slapping behind her. He could hear her loud breathing, and he was choking on fear, imagining her out of control, ready to kill, her eyes down as she struggled with cold inhibitions and the wild territory beyond, a sudden freedom that was sure to cost everything.

“Mother...?” Ben risked speaking. His voice sounded strange to him, his throat tingling from strange exercise.

He heard her throwing off her shoes, her heavy step as she went to her chair.

Thump. A quiet thump. He knew what it was. The butt of the gun, next to her chair.

 _What if the neighbors heard?_ They were far away.

 _She is going to kill him_.

 

It had happened again, days ago. This time she had cursed him and he had slapped and beat her back into silence. She had not come to Ben the next day, but brought his food the following day, both of her eyes black and her lip split. He could tell that movement was painful.

“Mother,” he asked as she bent down to place the tray of food on the floor.

She looked at him. Her eyes were empty, her face was pulled tight and motionless with swelling.

She stood looking at him, then turned to leave. “Let me kill him,” Ben pleaded, scooting closer to her on the floor, then slowly coming to his feet. “I will kill him.”

She stopped, but did not turn back to him.

“He is your blood,” she said. “He was never mine.”

She pulled the door shut, and turned the lock.

_He is my father._

He rushed to the door and pounded on it. She did not come. She denied him.

 

At a certain age Ben had tried the door when she was away. The old door was like a sheet of brick, and the windows were painted shut. He had broken one of them out, but could not get through the thick, weathered old barn wood with evenly spaced nail holes, some with the old rusty nails still hanging from them.

_Let me do it, mother. I will do it..._

He had sat for so many days, the seat worn out of his jeans, but now Ben sat, he sat listening in every moment until the moment when _his_ heard a car coming down the lane.

Why didn't she just run away?! There was nowhere to hide. But she could lay down in the tall grass...

Ben curled up on his little makeshift bed, useless, doomed. For the first time he could see clearly that life sometimes demanded more than he could give, and that he would be broken by this. He was about to be broken, his world taken from him.

 _He_ was in the living room and Ben heard the shot, then another. He heard a strange gurgled protest and there was another shot, stopping the sounds. All was silent.

“Mother?” he called out.

There were steps. Someone tried the door. The sound of someone lifting the key from the nail, then turning in the lock. The door opened slowly.

The man stood looking at him, a revelation. He took Ben, carrying him from the house, covering his eyes with his hand as they walked through the living room. But Ben could still see her through his fingers, an image he would never find a place for in himself.

 _I am sorry, so sorry! I never got to say goodbye,_ he thought. _Goodbye, mother._


	23. Of course you will

Ben was feverish, and rolled and jerked on the bed, his head in Sayid's lap. Sayid poured water through a tightly woven little sack, letting it trickle off of his face and head, neck and arms and torso. He held the sack high over Ben so the water splashed upon him, a cool, liquid massage that covered him like a moving fountain.

The heavy air of afternoon had changed. It had become sweet, like the air next to a waterfall, an island surrounded by sweet water at low tide.

James sat opposite Sayid, whittling away at one of his carvings, the scrapes of wood landing on a large burlap sack spread out on the floor at his feet, his arms resting on his knees.

“He started again...” Sayid observed quietly.

James nodded, but his expression did not change.

 

Ben was bundled up in his father's car. They listened to the radio as he drove all night. In the morning Ben sat up, peering out at a world that was blurry and bright. His father had returned from a little store with some clothes, and some scissors.

He pulled off Ben's ragged clothes, then cut his hair. He helped him to dress in the new clothes, which felt strangely confining and scratchy to Ben.

“Let me see your teeth,” his father said. “Now tell me what that sign says. Yep, you need glasses. Your teeth look fine.”

Ben was enchanted and horribly confused by having someone talk to him. He wasn't sure if he should try to say anything else, or even if he should run away. He wasn't sure if the man was done with him, or would take him somewhere. It was all so new, very distressing and comforting at the same time.

The man pulled in where a sign had a picture of glasses on it. They went inside, where it was almost as bright as outside.

Ben followed the man back to the car. Would he take him with? Ben was relieved when the man opened the car door for him, then went around to get in the driver's side. Ben stood for a moment, realizing that he had a choice, a new feeling. He got into the car and closed the door.

Ben liked his new glasses. He could see things in the distance now. And he was free. How wild and alive the whole world looked as they spun by it in a car.

 

They stayed that night in a seaside motel that smelled of mold and urine, and stale cigarettes. His father got drunk. At a certain point he started talking to Ben, though his mouth didn't really work right and it was hard to understand.

Ben learned that his father's name was Roger Linus. His mother's name was Estelle “Emily” Baldwin. They had never married, and Roger had not known about Ben. Roger sputtered and berated himself for “taking” her. It was how Ben came along, so there was no use complaining.

Ben wasn't sure what he meant, but knew that he disagreed. Roger had hurt her, and he would _never_ forgive him.

The next day Roger packed up their things. He had purchased quite a few supplies, including more clothes for Ben, and Ben began to wonder where they could be going.

Roger pulled up to the dock after sunset, dumping out all of their stuff in a pile under some low hanging trees, then driving the car to the far end of the lot.

Ben stood looking at him, not sure if he was coming back.

Roger got out of the car, rolling the windows up, then tossing the keys into the front seat. He made a funny motion as he walked away, a sort of “good riddance” jerk of his arm. It was clear he never expected to see the car again.

There they were, sitting next to their things in the moist darkness under the tree branches, waiting. Ben missed her again, those few moments when she had appeared each day, the hours he had listened for to her movements in the house, the horrible state of her when they left.

 _No no no no no_.... he thought to himself.

Roger's head popped up. “Yep,” he said, coming to his feet, helping Ben up. He handed some of their things to Ben, then grasped the rest in one hand, taking Ben's other hand as he led him down to the water's edge. There was a set of wooden stairs, and a crooked old dock.

The dock had a sort of watery ship next to it. Ben was pretty sure this was not a usual thing. As they went down the stairs, he could see that it was an underwater ship that had surfaced, and the top of it was open slightly. A man peered out, and whistled low. Roger whistled back, a series of notes. The man threw the hatch open, took their things, then Roger helped Ben in and followed him, looking around as he closed the hatch, securing it.

“Well, say something, boy!” Roger said, then he winced, holding his head in pain. Ben would come to know very well the signs of a hangover.

 

Ben was lost. He had run off again, and Roger had given up after calling him twice. Ben had heard him muttering as he drank and enjoyed handling his war memorabilia and his collection of guns, the majority of what he had brought here.

But now Ben was lost. He was lost on purpose, really. He had got himself lost, and now he was someplace not familiar, entirely new. He sat on the side of the trail and played with the found toys he was used to when he was younger, making the sounds, the dialogue of workmen.

Suddenly he was silent. The birds squawked, then were quiet. A strange man was walking towards him slowly, with a casual look of enjoying his walk.

Ben was not afraid. He liked the man. He was very happy he was walking towards him. What was about to happen?

“Hello Ben,” the man said as he stopped near Ben, smiling, then looking about at the trees and the sky.

“This is a nice spot to meet,” the man took a seat near Ben, settling in and smiling at him.

“You have a very important task to accomplish, Ben.”

“What?” Ben said. He still preferred to not talk, but managed as necessary. And he was curious.

“You need to take care of your father, Roger.”

Ben was confused.

The man waited, still smiling. “Do you know why you came to this island, Ben?”

“No.”

“You came here to make a deal. With me. You are going to punish your father Ben, for what he did to your mother.”

“Okay,” Ben said. He thought about punishing his father every day, to avenge her horrible death. To avenge just leaving her behind that way, and never returning. He couldn't bear it.

“All that you have to do is to agree to put this on at the right time, then open a little cannister like this one." The man pulled his rucksack off and pulled a gas mask and a little metal cannister from it. He explained what they were to Ben, then let him hold and try on the gas mask, which he found strange and exciting.

“This is serious Ben. There can't be any chance that you die with your father. Do you understand that a poison is going to come out of this and kill your father? Are you sure this is what you want?”

“Yes,” Ben was sure. Yet there was something he kept trying to recall, something that he was unsure about, but it kept slipping his mind.

“You will come to live with us, Ben, the “hostiles.” We were here long before your camp of people. And you, Ben, are the only one of your people who was meant to come here to stay. They brought you here, and have cared for you. But now you can come live with us. I think you will like that idea if you think about it.”

All that Ben thought about was surviving a poison that killed his father, splitting himself off from that stain, that wound that was everywhere he went, everywhere his father went, no matter how badly Ben wanted to get away from him. _He has to die,_ Ben thought, as he always did. _I will not go through the rest of my life looking at her between his fingers and not having done something for her, to set it right._

“I will,” Ben said, and the man nodded.

“I will give you the poison and show you how to use it. You will go with your father when he takes the van over to the meadow to drink. You will put the mask on, then open the cannister. He will die within a few seconds. I will tell you all of this again.”

Ben did not hesitate. “I will,” he said, and James smiled.

"Of course you will."


	24. I chose to stay

James was crying. He sat with his head back against the wall of the cave, his eyes alternately closed and then looking at, but not seeing his feet, hardly noticing the occasional tear running down his face. His breathing was deep, his breath the measure of complaints pushed out by the pain, and the little shudders of slipping deeper wavering on the out breaths.

Sayid got up from holding Ben, arranging him upon the bed, and went to James, sitting beside him, turning James against his shoulder, holding and rocking him as he cried.

“Ben will carry this part. Let it go.” Sayid held James, containing him and his pain.

 _He will be free now_.... Sayid thought as he rocked him.

When James stopped crying, he relaxed into Sayid's embrace, his messy tears on Sayid's shoulder.

“My love, my love...” Sayid rocked him. “Let go of these things. Your part is done. Your part is done.”

 _Now he can speak of these things,_ Sayid thought _._ Sayid felt a softening of relief in his entire body. Even his toes felt more relaxed.

At last James sat back and looked at Sayid, weary from a certain anguish, with the certain look that went with the willingness and ability to move on at last.

James looked over at Ben, still asleep on the bed, his face peaceful. Inside, James' mind had become still, controlled.

 _Now we can speak of these things_ , he thought, smiling a little at Sayid, rubbing his knee. _I wish to explain all of it, or at least try._

“When I wanted to leave, but could not...” James began. “I would do anything to escape. But when I could leave, that is when I chose to stay. Forever. But I did not know when I murdered all of those people that I would someday need the Island's forgiveness.” James was still looking at Ben.

“Perhaps Ben murdered them.” Sayid suggested, knowing confession was what James needed, what his soul required.

“I told him to do it,” James said. “I told him how. I knew where the poison was, and I gave it to him. I told him how to use it. He killed his father, then returned to help me kill the rest.”

James was silent then.

“Why did you have him do that, James?”

“Because I was trapped here. Because I _could not kill him_ , Sayid. There was no freedom for me with Jacob, and no freedom without Ben. I needed Ben to need me, to trust me, to be in my debt.”

Sayid already knew what answers James would give as to _why_ . But he needed to truly understand _how_ . _How_ would using poison gas to kill the whole camp of intruders, except for Ben, somehow destroy Jacob and free James?

“I needed Ben,” James continued. “I helped him to kill his father, and the price was for him to help me to kill everyone else. We enslaved each other, though I didn't care at the time. I would pay any price to leave the Island. Ben would pay any price to own it, and I was his way to Jacob. So I enslaved Ben by having him murder for me. We... the inhabitants... were all that was left to him then. He was mine.” 

James' voice was sad, but he also had a look of waiting, even as he talked. He watched Sayid for a certain clue, an interest in that which had not been discussed since Sayid had come to live with them, and became their third.

“I knew Ben was important to Jacob somehow. But for me, he was simply the means of Jacob's destruction. So I gave him to Jacob. I knew that Jacob would take him, even if he knew why I sent Ben to him.”

“How did you know that? That Ben could destroy Jacob?”

“Sayid... _Say_... I cannot kill Jacob. You are also unable to kill Jacob now that you are like him, like us. And he would not allow me to leave the Island. Wherever one of us is, so must the other be.”

“Yes, I have chosen to remain here also,” Sayid said.

“I brought Ben to Jacob, and he received him. They would not speak until I went away. But it was of no consequence to me. I had my plans.”

“When Ben returned to the inhabitants, the ones he had called “the hostiles,” he spoke for Jacob. And they received him that way. As he grew up, he brought messages from Jacob that turned out for the best. Everyone trusted him then. There was no doubt that he spoke for Jacob. And whoever or whatever Jacob was, they knew that he was entrusted with their care and protection... of the whole Island. As was I.”

Sayid got a strange feeling when James said: “As was I.”

“Tell me,” Sayid said. James hesitated. “My brother...” Sayid prompted.

“I can appear in another form.” James confessed. “It is my consequence for murdering for my selfish purpose. The Island has changed me in this way. Now I must be the one who murders, who serves the Island with...” James was silent, looking at Sayid's face, finding the fear there.

Sayid was perplexed. His eyes were wider. He was looking at James anew, wondering what he might see in him now.

“I can.... When the Island needs protection, I take the shape of black smoke that calls out, terrifying those who hear. It is horrifying, even to me. I can easily rid the Island with intruders in this form. I am so strong, so quick. I murder with impunity, with malice. This is the price of the Island for letting me live, and stay here to love my Jacob.”

“You fell in love with Jacob,” Sayid said.

“Yes I did. Jacob became much more than my brother to me. We shared the same mother, and we shared the same source and protection: the Island. But when I fell in love with Jacob... wherever he is, so am I.”

“Sayid,” James said then, his voice lower, softer. His head tilted a little, a question for a question, a confession for a confession. _He can talk about it now._

“When will you ask me the question that waits, always in your heart?” James touched Sayid's chest with his fingertips, with an gentle, boyish affection, then took Sayid's hand.

Sayid said nothing. James did not look away, waiting. Minutes passed. Sayid's fear was irrational, and he fought the memory; it seemed far greater than the question itself. He could not see why, _why_ it was so hard to ask, and so much harder to see the answer acknowledged upon James' face.

“James,” Sayid began at last. He was looking down a little, rubbing his knee with his other hand, then so very gently pulled his other hand away from James. “My James, _why_ ... why did you use me? Why did you rape me, _break me ..._ as my uncle once did?”

Finally Sayid had the courage to look up, to see what he found in James' eyes. He saw an unbearable sadness, a softening of all of James' being, and understood _why_ James had to do this horrible thing. It was the most full saturation of change in him, a lifetime of darkness used to burn up the one who burned, the fuel of his own redemption. Once burned off, only the essential remained.

Sayid understood then that James could only do this with a man who was not yet like him. And so the Island brought someone who matched his need for redemption. Someone who could endure a great darkness, and release a great darkness. Someone who could be broken again, then remade _for them_ , to be theirs, to become like them.

_This is why I am here,_  Sayid thought. _Jacob could not take this darkness from James. And James wished to stay, to be with Jacob._

It was an easy understanding, the question of _why_ . But Sayid felt a restless denial. He still could not understand _how_ James had been able to be so brutal to him, to fully inhabit the role of breaking him from without and within.

“How...?” Sayid began. “How could you....”

“Jacob asked me,” James said simply.”I crushed you with my hatred, oh my Sayid... I did it for him, from my love for him. And I am something else now. Such a long time of bitterness was lifted from me."

"I gave up, and chose again. I chose to live and to go on without that tortured place inside of me," Sayid said.

"Darkness is darkness, my love. It will take any form it pleases. We met in that place, and I walked through it with you. When we were finished, it was done. It is because of you that I am free. It is because of me that you are free... and both of us belong to Jacob, now. We are his forever.”

"We each began again, with nothing," Sayid again, relieved that he understood it all at last.

The lovers held each other's gaze, the fullness of their maturing connection changing in them as they talked.

“How did it change me, Sayid? Tell me...” James asked, wanting to hear Sayid give their love a story.

“You paid a debt. And it softened you. You were changed by the darkness passing through you as it was released. You were softened... my love. You are soft now, when once you were made of a bitter hardness.”

The two men looked over at Ben, still asleep. They were reluctant to move on from their conversation. They put their heads together as they watched Ben sleep, and James hummed a little song he had made up and favored. They sat together for some time, content as brothers.

When Jacob returned at last, the two men stood and embraced him, their mood light and joyful. “Help Ben,” is all that Jacob said, smiling and gently touching Sayid, then taking James' hand as he led him outside.

The place where Jacob touched Sayid had a liquid tingle, a quality of _becoming_. Sayid felt that he carried this quality to Ben as he turned and walked to him on the bed.


	25. Rules

Ben opened his eyes. The hidden cave by the statue, night, lamplight flickering on the ceiling.

He turned slowly on the bed. Immediately Sayid came to him, sitting beside him, helping him to sit up.

“I killed them,” Ben said without feeling.

There were low voices outside, but the voices became quiet. James and Jacob were there, waiting.

“You were a boy, Ben. James killed them.”

“I was plotting even then. Always making plans.”

“Did you have a plan, Ben?” _A confession..._

“I wanted them all dead. I wanted to belong somewhere else, away from my father and his kind. I waited to kill him, Sayid. Years and years. A boy who plotted the murder of his father. Because he _hurt_ _her_. He raped and murdered my mother, my only kin. I have no father.”

“I know this, Ben.” Sayid said.

“You have seen all of this, Sayid? Inside of me, the memories?”

“You know I have, Ben.” Sayid's voice was soothing.

“I don't feel anything about people, you know. I think about them. I can mentally despise the things that happen to them. But I feel nothing for them, Sayid. I did for _her_. But my feelings died with my mother.”

Sayid reached so slowly towards Ben, his palm flat, fingers together, giving Ben a chance to stop him, to say no. Ben did not move.

Sayid placed his hand on Ben's eyes.

 

Ben was a boy again, jumping about as he followed the trail down to the little ocean bay surrounded by large rocky ridges, ever reaching down like arms to enclose the gentled water before continuing down into the sea.

There was a little stream that beckoned and they stopped to drink. James was strange, whispering as he touched the water, touching his lips before bending to drink.

They turned, and Jacob was standing near them, smiling. Ben was startled, and surprised to see that he had met Jacob before. _It is him..._

“Hello James, my brother.” Jacob said. “Hello Ben.”

“You were there,” Ben said. “When my father came. I saw you.”

“Yes, Ben. You were eating an ice cream cone,” Jacob said.

** “You touched me. And I felt different,” Ben said. **

** “That was so you could come here. So you could play your part.” **

Ben was silent then, thoughtful.

“Come,” Jacob said, turning to the rocks, waving his hand. A hidden doorway in the rock opened up.

“I think you're a show off,” Ben said, and Jacob was laughing as they walked through and down the path.

 

They sat in the shade, enjoying the gentled breeze afforded by the protection of the rocks. The sounds became a world, surrounding them with the musical notes of paradise floating on the wind like leaves, all folded together somehow, a packet of secrets from a hidden source.

Ben was suddenly very still when he saw the facade of the temple appear while Jacob was looking at Ben, obviously enjoying Ben's reaction.

“James will be leaving soon,” Jacob said.

“Can I stay with you?” Ben asked.

Jacob answered with a funny smile.

“Yes?” Ben said. Jacob was even more interesting than James, who was more interesting than the inhabitants, though all were a part of his plans.

“You are not the only one who has plans, Ben,” Jacob said.

Ben looked at him closely. “Are you reading my thoughts?” He asked.

“It is rare of you to let others know what you are thinking,” observed Jacob.

“Can you teach me how?”

**“Maybe later,” Jacob said. “When you've grown. You're going to live on this Island for a very long time, Ben. You will come to love the Island. But first, you must learn how to protect it.”**

**“Why?” Ben asked. “Is there someone after it?”**

**“Lots of people,” Jacob said. “They are out there, day after day, trying to find us. They want the Island's magic, Ben. It is powerful, and it also a source for good. But if they take it, the good will be lost. Do you understand?”**

**“Yes.” Ben was listening very closely, obviously intrigued.**

**“Once there was a woman, our mother, who guarded the Island. We are the guardians now. And you two...” he stopped, looking at James and back to Ben, “have _done something_...” They were listening again, the world around them.**

**“You know I mean to leave,” James broke the silence.**

**Ben was concerned. Here was someone who could read his thoughts, and knew what they had done.**

**“James is restless,” Jacob explained. “He feels the Island a burden rather than a gift. He feels tied down instead of chosen. I can only leave the Island because my intention is always to return. James has no such intention. He must stay where I stay. And so, James has to kill me to get away. But he cannot kill me, Ben. Only someone like you can kill me.”**

Ben was looking at James as Jacob spoke these last words. He could see the pain in him. He decided Jacob was telling the truth.

“I'm not thinking of killing you,” Ben said to Jacob.

“Good,” Jacob said, and James suddenly stood.

“There are a lot of rules here,” Ben observed.

Again Jacob laughed heartily, his head falling back, the birds becoming silent for several moments as his laughter echoed away into the muffled closeness under the trees.

“Goodbye, Ben,” James said, stretching, looking around, changing focus. Ben shot up from his seat in delight, running around the clearing, seeing everything again, all of it his new home.

James turned and walked back through the arch onto the beach and was gone.


	26. First you must grow up

Jacob squinted at Ben, then motioned for him to follow him into the temple. The darkness was cool with a delicious little whisp of current to the air. Jacob watched as Ben slowed to look at the deities, then stopped. He was speechless. The air was thick with a sweet smoke, and a golden light rippled across the beings there, the play of shadow and light making them seem to move slightly.

Jacob smiled warmly when Ben looked back at him, and motioned again for him to follow.

“I'm going to let you touch something, Ben,” Jacob said. “It usually isn't handled by anyone.” Jacob reached back in a deep shelf for a package. It was a decorative box wrapped in waxy paper and flattened herbs. The herbs fell to the floor as Jacob carefully unwound the wrapping, placing the box on the desk.

Ben stepped closer, wanting to know what was in such an exotic box. Jacob reached to Ben, and took his hand, placing it on the box.

The box disappeared. Ben felt himself falling forward, then down, down as though he would never stop. He called out: “Jacob!”

“Open your eyes, Ben,” he heard Jacob's voice at his ear, his quiet breathing, a man's intelligence joined with his own.

Ben opened his eyes and he saw a man. He was a brown man, with golden skin and long black curls. He was surrounded by a group of people who were in chaos, who seemed to have washed up on the beach. Parts of an airplane seemed to have washed up with them. He did not recognize the beach, though he knew this place was the Island.

Ben was standing in the middle of the beach, watching all around him, though the others seemed to not see him. He watched this particular man, fascinated by him. He was confident, and strong. Other people asked him things, and he wished to help them.

Ben heard Jacob's voice at his ear, as though Ben was still standing next to him at the desk.

**“Do you see this man, Ben? He will be coming to us, to me, Ben. He will love us. But first you must grow up.”**

The scene faded and Ben was standing at the desk, the exotic box still unopened. Jacob simply smiled his benevolent smile, then stood to put the box away.

 

James returned the next day. Ben had slept in the bed, and Jacob had slept in the temple. Ben could just hear him whispering until he became quiet and slept at last with golden light from the oil lamps dancing around the perfect black canvas made by the doorway to the temple.

James and Jacob stood in front of the outside chairs, looking at each other, not speaking. Ben sat down at the table, watching the two men. He felt too old now to play with toys.

Something was going to happen.

Jacob reached to James, who stepped back a little. Jacob looked so sad that Ben wanted to say something, but he didn't know what to say. Ben realized then that he cared about Jacob, and that he also cared about James, feelings he usually didn't acknowledge in himself. 

“Don't....” Jacob warned, and James looked away, his hands at his hips. He was thinking. 

“Think, my brother.... what it will do to _him_.” Jacob gestured in Ben's direction, his face very serious.

“I'll hate you both,” James answered, but Ben could tell James wasn't being honest. _He doesn't hate Jacob. He loves him_ , Ben thought.

“Why are we going to leave?” Ben asked. “Why can't we stay here, James?”

Still they stood there. Something was about to happen.

Jacob lifted his hand again, reaching to James' face. James closed his eyes. Jacob touched his cheek.

“My brother...” Jacob said. “My love...” James opened his eyes.

“Let me go, Jacob.” James said. “You must let me go.”

“I know that you love me, James.”

“I know that I have to leave this Island. I hear the Roman Empire has been replaced a few times. There is nothing here for me.”

“You don't want to leave the Island, James. You want to leave me.”

There was a silence then. Ben thought these two men had never really talked about these matters before, or for a very long time. Why had they waited until there was so much pain between them?

James' voice became quiet, yet more strident. “I cannot love the way you do, Jacob. You are better than me. It hurts me... to love someone I cannot love enough. I cannot bear it.” The bell of truth seemed to toll once in the little clearing.

** Jacob's voice held a new hope. “Your love will grow, my brother. If you will it, if you say _yes_ to the Island's requirement, it will relieve you of your darkness at last. You will be free. **

** “I cannot.” James said. **

** “The Island's requirement, James. Pay the debt, and claim your prize.” **

** “I will not.” **

**_Jacob is the prize,_ Ben thought. _But what is a requirement?_ **

** James' voice became louder. “Ben will grow to be your second, you know that it is so. Why do you keep me?” **

** “He will be yours as well.” **

** “ _Why_...??” James seemed to be wincing at this, at a forgotten truth he would not accept. **

** “Take Ben back to the them. He will return when he is a man.” **

** “My brother... please let me go.” **

** “I will not.” **


	27. One of three

Sayid had remained a watchful presence in the quiet cave as Ben connected the moments of his life as a boy and then as a man, finding the larger pattern, his part in the play. He knew that his own psychic impressions of Ben's progress were important to follow and remember.

If Ben served the Island, he also served himself in everything he did. He had killed more than once, and claimed his place as leader. He had grown up manipulating others to do the things he could not do, things that the Island would not allow him. And Sayid had served no small part in the wider plans of Benjamin Linus.

But then Sayid also remembered. He saw himself slipping through the darkness, dressed for the Russian winter, his shoes crunching on the icy snow as he walked. He slipped through the gate of steel to find Ben waiting for him, an assassin returned. Ben was cruel in his casual revelation that they were done, that there were no more names, and that he had no further purpose for Sayid in his plans.

Sayid had killed the enemies of the Island, Ben's enemies, though he knew not which or both. There had been no honest assembly of skills and goals between them. There had been only dishonesty, and for Sayid a familiar numbness pierced by shame. They had been caught up together in each other's familiar agenda of hatred and murder, each for their own reasons.

 _Why was I so easy to use?_ Sayid thought again, finding a new answer to add to the previous ones he had won from memory. _I wanted to die. And so, I chose the soul's death._

Sayid remembered this long night of emptiness. His service to the Island had become the darkness in him again, the pressing down upon others, stealing their life force away. Their bodies lay where he dropped them, the smell of death a dark trail behind him as he found his way back to Ben, to the one who offered their names to him. Only their names. Sayid was free to choose the rest.

**Then the killing was finished, and they had returned to the Island, Sayid went back to the camp of the survivors, and Ben to the inhabitants. Other survivors who had been off Island had returned as well. _We all return_ , Sayid thought. _Yes... A requirement for leaving._**

The survivors were very happy to welcome Sayid back, and to have his help in the workings of the camp. He was quiet and withdrawn, but all who had returned had brought new burdens back with them. They pampered Sayid, giving him slightly more food, acknowledging his projects and progress around the camp. He returned to his role of protecting them from Ben's people, those they called the "Others.” There had been a skirmish that had reinforced the need to maintain a truce that was based upon no contact.

When Sayid returned, he found that they had lent his tent to someone who had kept it clean and dry, and he was so grateful and so suddenly tired that he dropped his things on the floor, then dropped onto the bed, instantly asleep.

**He dreamed he awoke to find a strange man in his tent. He was no threat to Sayid, but he could not see his face.**

**He woke up from this dream, and rejoined the life of the survivors, finding his place in what they shared with each other to survive.**

**Then one day, Sayid had awakened to find a strange man in his tent. He came to love this man, his Jacob. He had come to love him, and one other.**

**He became one of three.**


	28. Deeper than deep

Ben was sleeping. Sayid caressed his cheek and spiky hair, slipping away, standing to look around at the sweet little cave.

He went outside, then returned, humming his little soldier song, looking down at Ben with happiness.

 _He is done_ , Sayid thought. _But there will be consequence_.

“I do not know his requirement.” Sayid said as James took his place at his side.

“Jacob...” James said, and Sayid answered.

“Jacob.”

They both admired Ben's sleep of bliss, his breathing soft. He had completed the internal work of shedding his _karmas_ , reliving all he had thought was his choice, and moving beyond, making his freedom a sure foundation for service.

“Where does the fire come from,?” Sayid wondered. “The fire comes and it is all burned away.”

“Jacob...” James said, and Sayid answered.

“Jacob.”

“I think I understand,” Sayid said at last. "I think I understand, James."

James was silent. Neither man moved.

James smiled to himself, savoring the moment. _He knows... at last he understands._

“My requirement...” Sayid began. “My requirement was to be _broken_ , like so many that of those I had broken. So many who were hopeless when I was done with them. I took their hope, then their lives. I had them burned, I had them put in the ground.” Sayid's voice had a twist of anguish, but also the smoothing sound of a new peace with his past, no longer a detriment to his acceptance of a life of service.

“My requirement was to _break_ you, my Say. To take you almost unto death.” James' voice was pulled slightly by the buried pain of that brutal errand, the requirement to return to love from hatred, to choose the willingness do anything for the Island, who would then take him back.

James was revisiting his own moment of clarity, a memory before Sayid came to the Island, before he knew what his requirement was. “You were called here by Jacob. You were brought by my need. _My hatred,_ Say... All of my hatred of Jacob and yearning to free myself from him; this hatred built up in me for many years longer than your life. I used this hatred to break you, to take away all hope, all but your life.”

They both understood and were satisfied that their requirements were just and meaningful, with a difficulty that matched their redemption.

“My James,” Sayid said, turning to look at his lover, smiling. “Tell me how you came to love Jacob, and chose to stay after wanting so much to leave.”

James looked back at Ben, and was silent for a time.

“Jay, my Jay...” Sayid pulled a little on James' hand. He led James out to sit on the ledge, the men settling in, gazing out to sea.

Sayid waited.

 

“I hated Jacob as a boy,” James began. “I hated him, and I loved him. I had given him my heart. When we grew older, I loved him so much that I felt I couldn't stand it. Whenever we were together, I followed Jacob's every move, his every word. He was my delight... _Oh how I loved him_.”

“And Jacob loved me. But his love was different, and I could not see it.” James stopped, and began scratching at the rocky ledge with a sharp stone, carving a design into the path, an ongoing project that he found relaxing.

“I loved him, Sayid. As I grew up, I understood less and less his love for me. I rejected Jacob. I went to live with the inhabitants of the Island. They accepted me, as I seemed to be like them. I had become a man. But then they began to notice that I did not age.”

“I left camp to seek a certain boy who had come with his father to live with at the Dharma camp. I knew that he was capable of murder, that he wanted to kill his father. He wished to kill all of them, and I delighted in his ruthless will. **He would murder Jacob for me** , and I could leave. We came to serve each other. We made our plans. Ben did not hesitate. I helped him to join with Jacob and then to become leader of the camp. Thereafter he defended me to them, saying that Jacob wished me to stay.

“But Jacob wanted me. _He wanted me._ He appeared to me often, quietly asking me to return to him, trying to appeal to my heart. But my heart had become black with bitterness. I let my hate crowd out my love for him. I wanted to leave him forever, and to lose my need for him. I could not stand being trapped on the Island with him. I always found those seekers that found the Island, and I tried to leave with them, but Jacob would not allow it.”

_I will say it now,_ James thought, overcoming a practiced resistance. He leaned his shoulder against Sayid's and rested his head against Sayid's head, his hand on Sayid's knee.

“My Say....” James began, hesitating.

“Yes James,” Sayid said with affection.

 

“ _Jacob is the Island_ , Sayid. We serve Jacob. We serve _him_.”

The two men sat with their heads together, gazing out over the curve of the horizon, imagining the ships that had appeared there, picturing James revealing himself to them, promising much in return for passage, then Jacob welcoming or turning away the visitors _without James_ , always without James.

“Jacob loves me,” James felt in himself the truth of it. _Perhaps I really can say all of it this time,_ he thought. He had only said pieces before, losing his way halfway through, falling into his brother's eyes when Jacob looked at James with love. He tried again.

“My Jacob has always loved me. There is no way in which he does not love me. I know now that when he is silent, he loves me. When his eyes are elsewhere. When he turns to me, and turns away. When he walks away, then he loves me. It is a perfect love that does not change, that depends on nothing, no matter the distance made nor time passed.”

“And then, there came a time when I could not hate Jacob anymore.”

James rubbed Sayid's knee affectionately. "We belong to him, Sayid. We belong to him." 

 

 

BITS I'm still in rewrite

“When I realized this, I was confounded. My entire life had become one built upon the desire to leave him, the necessity of destroying him in order to get away. I only knew that I had to leave the one who hurt me deeper than deep, day after day. The one I would have murdered if I could to gain my freedom. But the one I thought of as my enemy was the keeper of this place, and  _one_  with its intelligence and will.  My willingness to love him opened the way for me to be healed, loved and healed."

 

 

“Was there ever a time...” Sayid said, “When Jacob was not one with the Island?”

 

“Our mother before him, before us,” James confided.

 

“Where is your mother?”

“Jacob's will is that of the Island, one with the Island, Sayid.”


	29. Tell me

Sayid and James sat together outside of the little cave, waiting, listening for Ben. Which way would it go? They leaned against each other in long moments of shared bliss, the smaller movements communicating the bliss and hunger of new lovers, new again.

They heard Ben dressing, and their caresses became stronger, their anticipation quickening their movements. Ben emerged from the cave, stretching and squinting in the bright light.

“It's time for me to take a walk,” he said, smiling.

Sayid and James smiled back. He was going to Jacob.

After Ben walked down and disappeared around the base of the statue, the two men stood as one and walked through the cave to the quiet little bed area, dark and still. They came down onto the bed together, laying on their sides, cradling each other, rolling and hugging, caressing each other's face and hair as their lips came together, softly and sweetly, a quiet promise of love and making love.

Sayid caught James' eyes, sharing there the release from James' harrowing requirement, now dissolving in unexpected grace, the pain dissolving at last in recognition, in seeing himself in Sayid's eyes, in the knowledge that Sayid saw of himself in his languorous gaze.

“I love you, Sayid,” James said. Sayid was afraid James would slip back into apology, and he put his fingers on James' lips, drawing James's lips to his own with his other hand grasping James' hair, subtly communicating his need and his passion.

“My James, I will always love you.” Sayid's voice was a little closer to James' ear. _“I need you, James.”_

James rolled onto his back, the larger man, pulling Sayid on top of him. “Tell me....” he said, pushing against Sayid with his movements, his pulling caresses on his shoulders and buttocks.

“James...” Sayid was overcome, feeling their love so strong in the new place of honesty between them.

“You are so fine, your body so beautiful,” Sayid continued as they pushed against each other, grasping each others' erections, pulling and pushing, then slowing to thumb and forefinger in a loose motion, thrilling as their erections had pulled their foreskins completely taught, the motions efficient and perfectly pleasurable.

Sayid slid down on the bed. And James closed his eyes as Sayid took him in his mouth, sucking him in, sucking on the head with motions of his flat tongue. Sayid pushed his lips to the base of James' cock, and held him there as James put his hands on the bed and pushed deeper into Sayid for a moment. James began to move in and then out of Sayid's mouth, feeling Sayid's arm moving as Sayid was pleasuring himself.

James slowed, then pulled out of Sayid's mouth, turning Sayid over, sliding slowly downward against him, squeezing himself against Sayid's back. He lay on Sayid, who struggled to breathe from his weight. James spit several times into his hand, smoothing it onto himself, testing again his hardness with satisfaction and the pride of “doing,” of being the one who caused someone to “be done.”

He pushed into Sayid at a challenging speed, rocking up so he could enjoy Sayid's gasps as Sayid took him in, then pushed back onto James with a guttural sound of pleasure that drove James, who drove into Sayid with another fullness of passion that he rode all the way to the brink.

James stopped, pulling out, and Sayid's sounds were of frustration as James sat up and Sayid turned onto his side, his hand in a slow rhythm, the moans of tension finely built, with no hint yet of release. Sayid remembered then a moment when he was a teen and had tried over and over to satisfy himself, finding a physical release, but still seeking a relief he could not give to himself: the pleasure and pleasuring of another.

James nestled tight against Sayid's back, rocking him with each stroke, adding his hand to Sayid's, squeezing Sayid's hand around his cock, making the strokes longer, but not any faster. Sayid moaned, arching his back. James would not let Sayid pull his hand away, still pleasing him with it.

James kissed Sayid's hair and pushed his head against Sayid's, rocking it against him, communicating tenderness, profound closeness, a moment that had found them both and gave so much more than it asked. The world had stopped. They had become one.

Sayid arched tightly and became rigid, the pleasure stretching him taut, his body and skin and his penis all tightly held in the position of receiving pleasure, of allowing himself the simple movements of pleasure, to allow his lover to see his honest dance of physical sensation and need. There were only the motions, and the fire building.

“James... James...” Sayid whispered as if to himself as he arched further, held against James, who had changed his motions to be exactly those he knew Sayid would like, the ones that would drive him further when he went over the edge.

And Sayid was calling out, his cries the physical words of abandon, of the intense power of love become release, moving through him, moving and filling him, the pleasure reaching his hands, his feet, his face.

Sayid lay panting, his mind stopped. The day seemed very quiet as his breathing slowed and they lay together in a tender sprawl, James still cupping Sayid with his body.

After awhile, Sayid pushed onto his back and the two men shared a sweet kiss. “You will be next, my love,” Sayid promised in between kisses. He put his arm behind his head, finding the familiar patterns in the ceiling of rock. He heard the little soldiers' song in his mind and began to hum it to himself, smiling when James hummed a little of it as well, familiar with it from listening to Sayid.

“Jacob is coming,” James observed.

“Yes he is,” Sayid said, then: “What will be Ben's requirement?”

James said nothing. “We are one, now,” Sayid said, chastising James gently. “Tell me.”

“Not just now,” James asserted. They both relaxed back into the special place between them.

“You are wise, James,” Sayid said warmly.

“I am a lot older than you.”

“I know that, funny James.”

“You think I'm funny?”

“You are funny in a way that only very very old people can be.” Sayid said, laughing.

“Well, that's the part of me that younger people are allowed to see.”

“I see you. Funny James.”

“I see you, my beautiful, beautiful Sayid.”


	30. All these years?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The final chapter of the Heart of the Island Trilogy

“Let us go to find Jacob,” James said in an excited voice that was noticeably boyish, with a mysterious sense of fun.

“My love...” Sayid protested, reaching for James with a most playful fierceness.

“We will...” James said, smiling, kissing Sayid sweetly, looking into his eyes with a look that Sayid found unreadable, enigmatic.

“Old person,” Sayid complained, teasing James as they got up, breathing in a new sweetness as they left the cave.

Jacob and Ben were coming towards them at the distant end of beach. James seemed both calm and excited to see them. Sayid felt something momentous was happening as he dutifully dug a little seat for himself in the sand, leaving the two makeshift chairs for Jacob and James, who greeted each other with a warm hug. Ben sat in the sand as well, glancing at Sayid, but not looking at James.

There was a long silence, which was not unusual for the brothers, who were never in a hurry.

“I have been rejected,” Ben spoke at last.

Ben said nothing more. There were three men looking out to sea, and four not feeling the need to speak.

Sayid looked at James, whose eyes were dark with sadness. A very old, weary sadness with a new mist of perfect release in them, as Sayid caught the very slight shaking of his head.

“Jacob chose me to give James something to do. A challenging project." Ben's darkest, self-absorbed sarcasm was perfect for this moment, but this skill was no comfort to him at all as he sat, still looking out to sea.

“You are so close to being accepted, Ben.” Jacob's voice was even more enigmatic than usual, always the one who knew more. 

Finally Ben looked at James, studying him. James was calm and loving, openly sad, with no sign of the fierceness that went with his role as gatekeeper.

Ben let himself feel hope. _Maybe this feeling of a new life is real._

“What was your requirement, Ben?” Sayid words were very gentle, with love and concern for the suffering man.

“I am required to live off-Island,” Ben said at last, looking at Sayid with a steady gaze.

“Not to return?” Sayid asked.

“Without knowing...” Ben said.

The irony of Ben's requirement was not lost on James, who looked down at his shoes. _I wonder how many pairs of shoes I made when I thought I would leave this island behind_ , he thought. He looked at Ben again, seeing clearly the emptiness that he had carried all of his life, the place made in him for the call to the love of and service to this Island. _He cannot give his heart. He has failed the test._

Sayid was enchanted by the long gaze James had shared with Ben. Looking with James eyes, he saw that _other_ being called Ben, not quite human. How had he not noticed before? Ben was old. Ben was more like James and Jacob than he was. Sayid had assumed that he was young because he was only now being tested.

“Why did you fail, Ben?” Sayid said with a tenderness in his voice, wanting to soothe Ben's bitterness. 

Ben answered another question, one with an answer that was easier to put in words. “I cannot control that world, James. I can only control _this_ world." He looked out to sea again, tilting his chin slightly towards the waves. "How can I cross this water to a place where I can only be one of many? A little being, forever apart. I have lived in that world. I know. You know me," he looked around. "Sayid knows. It is too much. My heart has rebelled. I cannot.... _leave_. I cannot live alone, knowing what I know. I belong here. I have never belonged there.”

"Ben." Jacob's voice was firm, a correction. Ben was very still, focused on Jacob. "Think of this. You cannot stay forever unless you have a choice. You must be able to choose both to truly choose one. And the Island has offered you that choice. Without the requirement, you stay without my love. To have my love, you must be willing to go and serve me in love. You must give me your heart. The Island knows that you are not yet willing.”

“You know these things...” Ben's voice was bitter.

Jacob smiled, so slightly.

“We all know you are the Island, Jacob.” Ben had found his usual sarcasm, moving the focus from himself, back to Jacob.

“I wasn't always, you know.” Jacob breathed as a creature remade with no boundaries, joined with an entity and power for good, hidden above and beneath the living ocean. Jacob let some of the fullness of that being show as he spoke.

"You have chosen me, Benjamin Linus," he said quietly. "You are mine."

Jacob's breaths seem to mellow, then slick past their ears with a flow and friction. All eyes were on Jacob's hands as he reached into his shirt and drew a cord over his head, handing it to Ben. Ben took it, feeling the weight of the little leather bag that was attached to the cords, warm from Jacob's body. Jacob's breathing was louder, a seeming liquid flutter at their ears, a wet warmth that _pushed_ inside.

Ben sat looking at this small, unadorned bag.

“Open it, Ben.” Jacob said.

Ben found and loosened the little leather drawstrings on the bag, turning it over onto his hand. He was silent, staring at his palm, utterly still.

The wind had stopped. All was silent.

“This will help you,” Jacob said. “You can choose, Ben. I know that you can choose with your heart.”

Ben was crying silently as he lightly nudged the little stones on his palm, shaking his head so slightly as he was suddenly transported back to a little boy trapped in a room, playing with rocks for toys.

“You knew me then?” he finally asked.

“I found you when your father found you." _But I was too late to help your mother._ Jacob thought again. _I am so sorry_.

Ben thought only of Jacob finding his little rocks, bending to pick them up, clasping them, keeping them. He felt perfect words flowing up from him at last, easily slipping past his usual defense of sarcasm and shifting loyalties.

“You have worn this, these... _for me?_ All these years?” Ben was picturing himself and all the things he had done and been a part of on the Island, years passing as Jacob had kept a little part of him close to his heart. Ben put the rocks like treasures back into the pouch, tightening the little cords, slipping them over his neck, grasping the bag there, feeling its weight. He felt like his entire life had been rewritten.

Ben realized at last that he was crying.

“I thought.... no one ever knew about my room... my mother. That I was there... alone.” Ben said softly, still weeping. It felt so strange to him to simply talk, without seeking a strategic advantage, without a certain veiling of his real intentions.

“You will never be alone, Ben. You are one of four. And we are one.”

Ben looked at Jacob. _Could he mean...?_

“You are willing, you have met the requirement.” Jacob reached for a glass flask from the net at his shoulder and offered it to Ben.

Ben was holding the little pouch against his heart, feeling the strength of an inner push, the strength to reach for his destiny. He reached with his other hand, grasping the flask with his eyes on Jacob, only for Jacob.

Jacob tilted his head back slightly, smiling. Ben loved his eyes; eyes that sparkled. Magic.

Ben took a long drink, then handed the flask back to Jacob, who took great pleasure in watching Ben, obviously stirring inside as he was entirely remade, thrilling at the soft look upon Ben's face, one of finding the greatest treasure, one that cannot be diminished or lost.

Jacob looked at Sayid, then at James, before he reached to Ben, grasping his shoulder with great affection. “Now you are like us... Ben. Now you are like me.”

 

~~ So ends the Heart of the Island Trilogy ~~  please leave kudos!!


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